Nestabilní podloží: Sesuvy, životy a perspektivy

„Countries do not shoot,” said E. M. Remarque. And he was not entirely right. Their often unstable substrate has the power to interfere with various forms of human as well as non-human life, and to intersect, redirect, or enable new pathways. Landslides reveal the liveliness, historicity, and permanent mobility of the Earth's surface, as well as activities beneath it that often remain imperceptible to the human eye. Through familiarity, insistent presence, and often fatality, landslides have been framed by humans according to contemporary and local religious, economic, environmental, or political contexts, by which they are perceived and culturally interpreted: as challenges, givens, communications, problems, risks, punishments, tests, parts of stories, etc.

The exhibition Unstable Substrates focuses on landslides of soil and rock as unique processes and spaces of encounter between different times and scales of Earth and humanity. It allows a glimpse into four contours of social and natural life of the landslide, which form the individual sections of the exhibition. The section Modern Science captures the anatomy of a landslide from the perspective of geology, as well as unveiling moments from the history of the formation of this scientific discipline. The real estate agency Realita, in its section of the exhibition, offers rather than plots or properties a basic reorientation of human perspective and experience in a world that is necessary for cohabitation with landslides, if one is to minimize damage. The section Restlessness presents the landslide as a rebellious element, whose unstable substrate has the power to destabilize the scientific, administrative, or anthropocentric certainties of modern humanity and its world. Last but not least, the section Life in the Cracks of the Earth presents the contours of life of the landslide despite the example of the village of Maršov in Uherskobrodsko.

The exhibition Unstable Substrates: Landslides, Lives, and Perspectives, prepared by a team consisting of Bob Kuřík, Vojtěch Pecka, Pavel Sterec, Jan Klimeš, and Jiří Suchánek, is a result of the research program Natural Threats of the AV21 Strategy and its topic Care for the Landscape in the Prevention of Dangerous Natural Phenomena: historical, legal, and social dimensions led by JUDr. Hana Müllerová, Ph.D. The exhibition is organized in cooperation with the Czech Academy of Sciences.