Epidermis

An image essay

zvukac, 2023

The skin lies between the extreme limit “I” which limits the horizon of freedom, and the extreme limit “my death” which limits the horizon of the given world. But we must resist our tendency toward symmetry (as we must resist all our prejudices).

Vilém Flusser,  The Skin

 

 

Epidermis   is an image essay about permanence and effervescence, incessant transformation, about returns and the feedback between humans, technics and nature. The metaphorical story alluded to here comprises and records the experiences of taking regular trips into the zone around the sludge lakes servicing the Počerady coal plant in northern Bohemia. At both the macro and micro scales, the narrative follows a walker traversing an arid , post-apocalyptic landscape towards a vale surrounding a black lake.

The construction of the Počerady power plant commenced in 1968. It was built between the towns of Most and Louny, and started operations in 1970. That was two years before the publication of the Club of Rome’s  The Limits to Growth . The study was one of the scientific studies commissioned for the UN’s  Stockholm Conference  focusing on the relationship between humanity and the environment. It was subsequently published as a book and is considered groundbreaking for the history of environmental protection on Planet Earth. It sums up the careful analysis of the world economy between the years 1900 and 1970. Apart from other notable parameters, such as the level of environmental pollution and the extraction of natural resources, the study’s authors argue that our economy exhibits exponential growth and so must inevitably reach a point of collapse.

The Počerady power plant currently oxidizes about 6.2 million tons of brown coal a year, producing about 6 Gigawatts of electrical energy, which is about 7% of the overall Czech power grid consumption. The power plant is embedded in bedrocks of the landscape and connected to the sky. The brown coal for combustion is hauled from the Vršany lignite mine just a few kilometers away and the water needed for washing the raw coal is pumped via pipes from the Ohře river. Počerady’s sulfur emissions in the form of sulfur dioxide have significantly decreased since the 1998 installation of a desulfurization filter device. The plant however still sends over 5.5 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. In 2018 it became the greatest centralized source of pollution in all of Czechia.

The power plant’s immediate surroundings have mostly been hit by fallout of toxic mercury, reaching a volume higher than 125mg per hectare each year. Heavy metals then penetrate the bodies of water plants and animals, entering through the outer layer of their skin – or  Epidermis  in Latin. Brown coal is composed of peat – the solid compressed fossil remains of formerly living organisms, animals and plants. Coal seams are geological strata of hard, metamorphosed parts such as tree trunks, shells, bodies, teeth or bones. We excavate the coaled or oiled fossils from the darkness to oxidize them in furnaces, their heat energy being distributed and transformed into electricity. And this electric energy makes human wealth and human dominance possible.

Residual externalities such as emissions and ash particles become incorporated as sediments into the landscape. Here lie the combustion extracts of fossils merged with surface water or activated by atmospheric jets to contribute for erosion. The remains of our wealth becoming part of the atmosphere in the form of migrating toxic mists which usually fall as acid rain somewhere on the skin of the landscape and permeate towards the center of the planet and the cores of living bodies.

Where the asphalt road ends, there where the villages of Třískolupy and Volevčice used to stand in past, there is today a factory producing Beston concrete blocks and BEST-Polerady drywalls. On your way to BEST, you pass the carbonized, burnt-out torso of a massive old oak, its black body covered in tumor-like clusters of xylophagous fungi. (Once the surroundings of the tree were scattered with strange items, like an archeological site of a Neolithic Urnfield culture). BEST makes drywall, blocks and paving tiles out of the mixture of sedimented ash, gypsum caught in sulfur filters, and kaolin clay. They pave the roads and walkways of many cities.

When you circle around the factory fence, a grassy meadow stretches upwards towards the heap-speckled landscape. Tufts of sharp orange grass are receding by the meter, making way for a desert biotope common around active volcanoes. When the Walker reaches the horizon he encounters sci-fi scenery: two great lakes in the vale below, separated by a thin dam. No trees as far as the eye can see, only small islands of squat shrubs here and there. Twins of tall concrete towers rise from the Black Lake’s waters. Reeds sway in rhythm along the steep banks. Kestrels and pigeons circle above the towers and ducks flock below, wild geese, an occasional swan, and a predator bird gliding below the clouds searching its prey.

A few thick pipelines run along the horizon, away from the power plant and coal preparation complex, and one or more pipe mouths spew thick, dark liquid into the Upper Lake. Tons of ashen sludge and quartz pebbles roasted yellow from the immense heat of the furnaces working at around 1000° Celsia. They now sink to the bottom of the Upper Lake. The sludge sinks, while cleaned water flows through a thin pipe under the water level and into the Lower Lake. White smoke rises constantly from the three chimneys and cooling towers, forming artificial clouds which are visible from as far away as Prague. The electric plant stands a few kilometers from the lakes, so the Walker cannot hear the ceaseless hum of the turbines. The atmosphere is tranquil but grim, and there is usually no one around.

The remnants of wet lime desulfurization mix with ash and form into dark-grey, fine sand which turns to slurry and muck after contact with water. Diggers occasionally arrive to extract the sedimented sludge from the bottom of the upper lake, and trucks deposit it on the top of the surrounding plateaus. The entire valley will disappear within a few years. When the mud dries or when it is soaked by rain, it transforms into loess and is slowly colonized by airborne seeds of resilient plants. When the wind picks up after a few days without rain, the slopes swirl forming dust devils of black grit. The thin skin of the Počerady Zone migrates through the local microbiomes towards planetary systems.

The immensely diverse contours of the coal-ridden and “quasi volcanic” landscape on the south horizon, the burnt, wind-lashed quartz stones, smoothed and shaped by the river, all of it is part of our corroded and corroding present.

In geological and botanical terms, the Počerady Zone might be the most dynamic and morphing landscape the Walker has ever visited.

The “Epidermis” image essay is linked with the concept of The Lost Expedition, Post-national Conceptual Mobile Network (PNCMN) which was part of the Radio Jelení / and Lemuria TAZ radio between 2003 and 2007.Camera: Miloš Vojtěchovský, Ondřej VavrečkaSound and video editing: Miloš VojtěchovskýProduction: Artyčok and Blackdog Studios