ESSAY: Hanna Mamzer

"here" and "there". In this context, a fence is a mobilization tool for some action; for example, you can play football here, because it is a pitch.

The fence therefore has several functions: a psychological one by providing comfort to hide behind and satisfying the need for security; a social one by separating worlds; an architectural one constituting an element of space; and an aesthetic one, by ornamenting or disfiguring a landscape, fitting it into a context or becoming a dominant part of the landscape. The tendency to build fences is an expression of certain socio-cultural conditions and, I think, one can risk the thesis that less open communities, with a higher level of uncertainty and fear, will build fences and fencing more for fear of the invasively perceived presence of others. Conversely, more open cultures, give up this kind of fencing, and if they use it, then it is with the intention of serving a very specific utilitarian function (e.g. limiting the freedom of animals). The implementation of these trends is very visible in the spatial organization in the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States of America, where as a rule, no fences are set up, preferring an open space around residential buildings. On the one hand, it may indicate openness, but on the other hand, it may

ESSAY Hanna Mamzer

indicate a high level of social control, when representatives of the local community have real insight into the private worlds of others.

In societies which avoid the placing of fences, an interesting phenomenon is the use of so-called invisible fences, which are a kind of modification of electric fences intended to keep dogs on the property: these are de facto fences which are buried in the ground. The use of such fences is an interesting psychological and spatial procedure. On the one hand, it communicates a reluctance to introduce architectural barriers to the space, but on the other hand, it shows the need to control—in this case, companion animals, dogs. Of course, this can be explained by the desire to ensure the safety of animals (e.g. to avoid road collisions), but nevertheless, the combination of the readiness to use aversive stimuli such as electric shocks on a dog, and the apparent unwillingness to use a conventional fence, is an interesting phenomenon. The fence here becomes a visual designate of the border: it makes it visible and causes that, apart from the mental one, it also acquires a physical dimension.

Enclosing spaces with fences marks the spaces between humans, between humans and non-human animals, or between different non-human

ESSAY Hanna Mamzer

animals. However, from the point of view of the welfare of wild animals, it is problematic, because the creation of such physical barriers takes away the possibility of migration. Closing migration corridors forces animals to look for other passages, which is not always met with enthusiasm by people. This is especially true of forestry crops: felling areas where young plantings are introduced are fenced to prevent wild game from gnawing young shoots. This forces the animals to maneuver between areas, pushing them towards farmland where they begin to search for a feeding base. For this reason, in forests in Poland for example, there are strong tendencies to exterminate deer which purportedly "harm" young forest crops.

Fences separating various non-human animals, which have raised much controversy in recent months, are justified as efforts to physically limit the spread of African swine fever (Mamzer 2020), a viral, deadly swine disease caused by Asfivirus. The spread of the virus through the human vector directly threatens the maintenance of efficient pig production. In Poland, however, instead of emphasizing greater biosecurity, the authorities have adopted wild boar culls (the so-called depopulation) and fencing. The latter was performed allegedly to hinder the migration of wild boar and automatically limit the spread

ESSAY Hanna Mamzer

of the virus. In Poland, in February 2014, the first cases of ASF were detected in wild boars, which probably arrived from Belarus. By the end of 2015, all cases of the disease were located near the eastern border of Poland. However, in 2016, the virus spread to the central parts of the country. By the end of July 2018, there had been 182 outbreaks of the disease in Poland, and 3,300 cases of ASF were detected in wild boar in the same year. In November 2019, 20 ASF-positive wild boars were found in the Lubuskie Voivodeship. In December 2019, another outbreak of African swine fever was discovered in Wolsztyn, Greater Poland (see: Mamzer 2020).

The detection of ASF cases in November 2019 in the Lubuskie voivodeship provoked the Polish authorities to create physical barriers; in this case, a forest net fence was placed on the border of the Lubuskie and Wielkopolskie voivodeships. The fence itself was 180 cm high, and was equipped with a beam at the bottom to prevent wild boars picking up the net and passing under it. The effectiveness of this type of fence is questionable because wild boars can dig underneath it, while smaller animals such as foxes, which can also be ASFV vectors, are free to squeeze through the

ESSAY Hanna Mamzer

mesh. However, the fence was built. With a lot of resources—it gave the illusion of security by APPARENT separation of two areas from each other.

Building such fences is not a new idea; however, when you look at them, they appear to be more a scream of powerlessness. It is worth recalling a few similar, dramatically ineffective attempts to separate the worlds of living organisms from each other. For example, two fences have been erected in Australia, where the idea of introducing fencing is clearly socially rooted: one against dingo dogs and the other against rabbits.

The dingo fence measures a total of 5309 kilometers in length, runs through three regions of Australia and is called differently in each of them: in Queensland the "Barrier Fence" (2500 km), in New South Wales the "Border Fence" (584 km) and in southern Australia the "Dog Fence" (2225 km). The construction of the fence was completed in 1885. The extremely rapid expansion of the dingo population was made possible by the importation of rabbits by Europeans to Australia and the shipments of sheep in the eighteenth century. Both soon became a significant component of the feeding base of dingoes. The war against the dingo was started in a systematic way by passing the so-called Dog Act in 1830, which recommended restricting the

ESSAY Hanna Mamzer

dog population. The dogs were killed, the trappers were rewarded for delivering the dog's tails, the young were picked from the nests, and later they were poisoned with strychnine (Holden 1991: 22), sport hunting and "canned" hunting** were also organized (Holden 1991: 23). The intensity and ultimate effectiveness of these activities led to the present situation: the dingo was included in the VU (vulnerable) category in the Red List of Endangered Species of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Its Resources (Corbett 1995, Corbett 2008, Mirbeau 2003). In the meantime, however, desperate farmers made a strategic decision: to change the profile of their livestock production. Instead of sheep, they concentrated their production activities on cattle (Holden 1991: 26).

The Rabbit Proof Fence, which was intended to prevent rabbits from entering Western Australia, was constructed in 1901 and 1907. It measures 3,256 kilometers and is a desperate form of fighting the plague of rabbits brought from England in 1859 by Thomas Austin to be used for hunting (Jahnke et al. 2010). The shooting of rabbits did not bring the desired effect, so an attempt was made to use a biological weapon: the myxomatosis virus, to which the rabbits quickly became immune. In 1996, these biological

ESSAY Hanna Mamzer

controls were supplemented by calicivirus imported from China and rabbit fleas from Europe, which proved to be an effective method of killing them.

As described above, fences are not effective in stopping "unwanted" migration, they are rarely effective barriers at all, they are relatively strongly "impermeable", so they appear to be a real barrier. Of course extremely tight fences are used to surround prisons or camps; however, they are often reinforced with some instrumental apparatus, such as guards, barriers or an electric current.

People perceive the fence as an oppressive, artificial and unwanted structure. This is why Carl Hagenbeck, a German animal trainer who brought wild-caught animals to zoos, proposed the introduction of grated-free animal displays. In situ exhibitions were supposed to give an impression that the animals live freely in their "natural" habitat; they were not separated from the visitors by the bars of the cages, but by natural barriers such as water. Another interesting form of masking a fence is a hedge which, being an artificially-introduced material barrier by humans, is supposed to simulate a natural creation at the same time. The aim of the vegetation in this case is to mask human activity and its interference with the natural space.

ESSAY Hanna Mamzer

Therefore, the fence can be seen as a kind of embarrassing border. We need it to satisfy our needs for isolation and security, but we do not want to admit it, so we mask it in various ways, either physically or psychologically, rationalizing its use and explaining that it is needed.

____________ ** In canned hunting, animals are deliberately kept in farm conditions, then taken to the hunting ground and released as a target for hunters participating in the hunt.

ESSAY Hanna Mamzer

References: Corbett L. (1995). The dingo in Australia and Asia. University of South Wales. Corbett, L.K. 2008, Canis lupus ssp. Dingo. [w:] The IUCN Red List of Threatened

Species 2015 [online], wersja 2015.1 dostęp 30 stycznia 2019 Holden P. (1991). Along The Dingo Fence. Hodder and Stoughton. Sydney,

Auckland, London, Toronto. Jahnke, M., Holmes, E. C., Kerr, P. J., Wright, J. D., Strive, T. (2010). Evolution and phylogeography of the nonpathogenic calicivirus RCV-A1 in wild rabbits in

Australia. “Journal of virology” 84(23), 12397–12404. doi:10.1128/JVI.00777-10 Mamzer H. (2016). Mury. „Czas Kultury” 4/2016 s.5-10. Mamzer H. (2020). Choroba jako zjawisko społeczne. Analiza walki z afrykańskim pomorem świń. „Ruch Prawniczy Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny” 82(2), 2020 ss. 281-297. Mirbeau O. (2003). Dingo. Editions du Boucher. Societe Octave Mirbeau.

GALLERY Paweł Adamiec

INSOMNIA Photo/make-up: Paweł Adamiec Costumes: Martyna Kramek Models: Paulina Nalepa, Piotr Kupiec Assistant: Bartłomiej Stanisławek

https://www.facebook.com/Totoro.Adamiec