pusta [fallow land / Brache] 

 

flanš

Infrastructures [Latin: infera – beneath / systema – to join together] are often seen as a foundation—as something that simply exists. But infrastructures are shaped. They pump, channel, clog, and drip. They exist only as long as they are maintained. I view traditions as infrastructures—pipeline systems that convey meaning. They connect the past with the present and point toward expectations for the future. Pipelines are not static; they require maintenance and a dynamic flow. When the flow stops, they rust from the inside; when they become too rigid, they burst. These systems were not necessarily planned consciously. Many have evolved over decades—from rules, moral values, customs, and relationships. They hold a fabric together, often unnoticed, until something fails. Only then do we recognize these structures.

In Lower and Central Lusatia, invisible and visible pipe systems collide. On one side: Sorbian traditions. Language systems, dress codes, rituals that run through villages like fine capillaries. On the other side: the open-pit coal mines. Massive, industrial systems that tear open the earth to extract energy. This infrastructure devours other infrastructures. It interrupts flows. It shatters continuity. Yet the traditional systems do not simply collapse; they adapt. Birch trees grow at the edges of the open-pit mining pits. Pioneer plants on cultural wastelands. In my work, they become new conduits. They grow right through the destruction. Their wood embodies the experience of disappearance and new beginnings. They show how Sorbian/Wendish identities continue to grow today in all their contradictions. Sometimes internally tiled, assimilated over centuries. Sometimes exploited. As with everyone else, perpetrator and victim are intertwined within every Sorbian/Wendish person. In open-pit mining, as one’s own village is excavated, the “first” and “second” bodies intermingle here, as Daisy Hildyard describes:

Every living thing has two bodies these days – you are flying into the atmosphere and back down to the ground right now, but you can’t feel it. You breathe something in, and what you breathe out is something else. Your first body is […], the place you live in, made out of your own personal skin. Your second body […] is a body which is not so solid as the other one, but much larger. This second body is your own literal and physical biological existence – it is a version of you. It is not a concept, it is your own body. The language we have at the moment is weak: we might speak vaguely of global connections; of the emission and circulation of gases; of impacts. And yet, at some microscopic or intangible scale, bodies are breaking into one another. The concept of a global impact is not working for us, and in the meantime,

your body has already eaten the distance. (Hildyard 2017)

The effects of our everyday lives are rarely directly visible or palpable in (western) realities. The open-pit mine is a rare place where everyday life (first) and global reality (second body) overlap. Birch and pine trees stand at the edge. The birches are adorned with traditional ribbons from Central Lusatia—remnants, what is still tangibly present, a symbol of resistance. These ribbons are not relics. They are connections (flanges / flanš) to what remains.

Karolina Krawcec / Karoline Schneider, 2026