According to the perspective of American land artist Robert Smithson, there is a connection between mind and earth, which he calls abstract geology: “One's mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing, and conceptual crystallizations break apart into deposits of gritty reason.” (Smithson 1968) The correlation between mind and nature is also seen by cybernetist Gregory Bateson (2006), who views this interconnection through the prism of system theory. Ecologist and philosopher David Abram refers to Aboriginal Australians, who look at the outer material world as the result of a certain movement that is captured in its manifestation (Abram 2013). The outer landscape has an inner aspect – a story, which is expressed in songs of wandering tribes. The deeper perspective of material world is opened by singing traditional songs, which bring the essence of life from Dreamtime. The dreaming tracks have been walked through the landscape as if it was a score and the songs brought its immanent story to life.
In the Czech Republic, collectivisation under the communist regime was a major blow to the local landscape, when diverse fields were ploughed, unified and old roads and draws were abolished. Small sacral buildings that stood along these roads were thus left alone in the midst of monocultural fields. Now, some of the former fields are dislodged with development, and the altered landscape is encased in new settlement. The remaining fragments of greenery are like vents, the nostrils of an animal suffocating under a layer of concrete. New residents quickly become accustomed to the anonymous network of roads, highways, supermarkets and waiting rooms. The “non-places”mentioned by the anthropologist Marc Augé (1995) in the sense of places without identity, to which they transform from the original, contextualized landscape.
Augé creates this neologism as the antithesis of an anthropological “place”.While places create a sense of identity for their inhabitants, non-places are the anthropological spaces of transience. They are places of transition where no one stays – with the possible exception of those who work here and form a relationship with these zones. This unified space with no identity is increasingly growing into lived space. According to Augé, the increase of non-places is a manifestation of supermodernity, which is characterised by excess - overabundance of events, spatial overabundance and individualization of references. How to deal with the growing overpressure of the living space, from which there is no escape?
Even during the years I walk here, I can see changes in the limestone rocks due to erosion. However, they are much more marked by the influence of man, during a relatively very short period in the 19th century. Limestone, which makes up most of the valley, is an important raw material for humankind, which is used to make burnt lime and cement, raw materials important in construction. The ancient Romans used the word “opus caementicium” to refer to masonry similar to concrete. Today, this “opus” lines the valley, which is naturally protected, from all sides. The excavated mass was transformed into settlements, similar to the blocks of the surrounding modern blocks of flats. The excavation uncovered an otherwise hidden secret of the history of sediments. Water seeping from the surface into the underground gradually expanded the fissure systems and created hidden cave complexes over the ages. In one of the quarries, in 1912, a powerful spring sprang up during the breaking of the stone and gave rise to Hlubočepy Lake (Cílek 2003: 27), which is still there today (on the bottom photograph in the process of revitalization). The ancient records refer the sound of water was also heard in the fissure of the cave in which, according to legend, St. Procopius lived, after which the valley is named. On the rock above the cave, from the 18th century until the second half of the 1960s, there used to be a small church of St. Procopius – one of the most important patrons, protectors of the Czech land. Every Sunday after St. Procopius's Day (4th July), the famous Procopius pilgrimage took place and visitors streamed through the valley to the church. The monument was damaged by mining in a quarry and the church was demolished in 1966. The 120-meter-long Prokop cave was also demolished, containing valuable archaeological finds that have documented the stay of humans since prehistoric times: the bones of a mammoth, cave bear, hyena, lion, the remains of the bones of a man in his 20s, a prehistoric mammoth hunter... (Němec 2003: 123)
What has happened to the breath/the spirit (spiritus) that formed this landscape? How do breathe prefaricated blocks of flats and houses with a grinded history in concrete walls?
The land I am walking on, this solid base and my anchorage, has not always been at this point in the northern hemisphere. In the era of the Paleozoic period, the land that forms today Bohemia and Moravia was located deep in the southern hemisphere as part of a “microcontinent” Perunica near the supercontinent of Gondwana (Havlíček, Vaněk, and Patka 1994). Perunica gradually moved north to the equator and the place that had become the Prokop Valley was situated at the bottom of the Paleozoic Sea in the gulf of Perunica. Here, sedimentation occurred, thanks to which traces of the then underwater life were preserved in the limestone rocks. This process of variation continued in the Silurian and in the Devon, while Perunica was gradually pushed north by Africa, where it clashed against the present Scandinavia (Baltica). Thanks to the “clash” the Prague Basin was arched and 390 million years ago the sea receded, erosion gradually flattened the land, in the Mesozoic era the sea returned, and later receded again. The process of rising and falling, similar to breathing (Cílek 2003: 21), in the tens of millions of years. The cycle of ups and downs was then repeated during the formation of the river network, the Prokop and Dalej stream sank into the primordial rocks and chewed through a groove of deep valleys, revealing in places the memory of time in the rock sediments.
On the edge of the protected area, where the natural park meets the settlement, only in my lifetime have new settlements been built. From the perspective of the new buildings, the best ones are those who see the greenery and views of the valley below the windows. From the perspective of the valley, which, thanks to its absorption, creates a special micro-world, there is a loss of rest from the surrounding civilization. The blocks of flats are gradually pushing onto the horizons like a raised finger, visible even from some places that have so far been hidden in the valley. On the housing estates under construction stockpiles arise, on the former fields the ground is torn apart, waiting for a load of multi-storey houses, many estates, many lives. Wayside crosses and wayside shrines along the original field roads, some of which were interwoven with the landscapes of pilgrims travelling here on the Procopius pilgrimages have been destroyed or taken out of context. Places that were connected with local identity lose those who would recognize it.
Before describing the project, let me take you for a walk in natural park Prokop Valley in Prague where the project took place and to start with a reflection of what has happened there in the past:
