The many natures of a spoil bank

“Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (Genesis 1:26)

„To effectively protect the ecological value of post-mining sites, finances should be used not only for ecological restoration immediately after the end of mining, but also for subsequent habitat management and its monitoring. Using appropriate conservation measures, e.g. partial elimination of littoral vegetation, pond silt control, grass mowing, pasture or maintenance of open forests by selective harvesting, the variety of successional stages of both water and terrestrial habitats on post-mining sites should be maintained.“ (Doležalová et at. 2016, 10)

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The project illustrates the transformation of dual perception of a post mining landscape in the Czech Republic while concentrating on the area of Kopistská spoil bank and its reclamation. 

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Mining stands for a process of commodification of land - or rather its particular soil layers – which leaves behind only anthropogenic landscapes. One of those is a spoil bank, the deposit of unwanted, the accumulation of history hidden in ground layers, whose structures are mixed and hence puzzled by its transferring to another site. From the critical point of view, cleared of any positive connotation, I understand a technical reclamation as an effort to recultivate not a devastated area but a conscience, as a continuation of the blatant possession. In terms of re-valuing the landscape, the particular species which are emerging spontaneously are understood as priority by reason of its protection. So we can see the great crested newt or the yellow-bellied toad as a modern form of brown coal only hidden under the veil of ecology, as a mediums of human decision (and conscience) to which surrounding landscape elements has to subordinate.