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Paper short abstract

In post-mining Krušné hory, residents navigate unstable physical and symbolic ground. This paper explores how perception, memory, and affect shape ambiguous landscapes, using the figure/ground relation to examine shifting attachments to place.

Paper long abstract

In the Krušné hory region of northern Bohemia, brown coal extraction has reshaped not only the physical terrain but also the symbolic and affective ground on which lives are built. This paper explores the layered instability of ground – both material and epistemic – through ethnographic research in post-mining communities grappling with the aftermath of decades-long strip mining and contested revitalization. In Czech, the term "zahlazování" (effacement) refers to post-mining reclamation, but also evokes deeper erasures of memory, loss, and entangled human–nonhuman histories.

Through interviews with residents, former miners, and planners, I trace how post-industrial landscapes are experienced as both intimate and alien: filled with memories of childhood play on spoil heaps, yet haunted by pollution, precarity, and displacement. These affective textures coexist with infrastructural decay and geological instability, revealing broader erosions of trust and narrative continuity.

To frame these dynamics, I draw on the figure/ground distinction from Gestalt psychology, which describes how perception relies on shifting relations between what is foregrounded and what fades into the background. In this context, residents emerge as perceptual and political figures against an unstable ground of altered ecologies and unresolved infrastructures. What recedes (dust, noise, industrial ruins) can return through affect or memory. Ground, then, is not a solid foundation but a shifting field that shapes how people perceive history, inhabit change, and imagine possible futures. Rather than seeing post-mining sites as either damaged or restored, I approach them as terrains of perceptual and existential ambiguity.