Montage space: Extra scenes

Abstract

In this author's reply, we outline the four commentaries on our article and consider them as interpretations of the same relational story: part of the montage. By intersplicing the four commentaries with extra scenes from ‘Montage Space’, we explore again the riverine, more-than-dry, and more-than-human that both Koch and Squire choose to take downstream, the human land grab that Miller recenters, and the paradox existing between the material geography of a disputed river island and the proclamation of a virtual state, which Cattaruzza identifies. The four critical engagements with ‘Montage Space’ work to add depth to our own exposition of a squelchy island space and the strange creation of a new state in this contested borderscape, where statehood was violently imposed onto a space deemed to be empty and characterless rather than a vital part of a territorial dispute and a wetland biosphere reserve.