The sub-study focuses on the infrastructural use of the environment for mobility and transport on and around the inland waterways of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The local economy that supplies the river cities of Congo today does not only rely on older patterns of exchange. It also draws on skills and knowledge of how to use the environment for transport and mobility. This includes the use of trees for the production of canoes, paddles and planks; the use of hand-woven baskets and containers, and of fibres for wrapping equipment; the use of leaves, resin and clay for caulking and repairing boats; but also the use of the river itself, with its capricious forces, both visible and invisible, which are dynamic in time and space. The project aims to engage with these ethnographic realities by theorizing the skilful kinetic interaction of local actors with the environment and its forces as infrastructure.
Photo credits: Baleinière and bwátu (canoes) at the confluence of rivers Lulu and Lomami in Opala, which has been serving as the town’s de facto river port (Tshopo province, DRC), March 2024 © Peter Lambertz (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).