Cracking the Surface: Flows Between Above and Below Ground
open access | peer reviewed-
edited by
- Simone M. Müller - University of Augsburg - email
- Livia Cahn - Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München - email
‘Cracking the Surface’ is a metaphor that resonates deeply with the contributions to this special issue that began from an interest to compose with and better grasp the movements and interrelationships between, from and across, above and below ground. How to write them up together in a way that is mindful both of human and more-than human actors, materials animate and inanimate, and their respective power relationships? Focusing on matters extracted, others dumped, ground that falls, water that rises, divers that delve, pollution that spills and percolates, villages that collapse and buildings that rise, contributions in this special issue reassemble and reassess the very relationships between above and below ground. To give depth to the surface, contributions from architects, art historians, anthropologists, cultural theorists, film makers, historians, photographers, and a sound artist engage with the volumetric perspective and explore the possibilities that cracks, holes, or pits – as mines, excavations, pits, or water reservoirs – confer conceptually when analyzing the existential threats to our collective conditions of existence on this planet.
Keywords Eva Perón • Anthropocene • Gaps • History • Diffraction • Existential pluralism • Spoil tip • Coal • Vertical Turn in Visual Culture • Nairobi • Critical zone • Multispecies Relations • Salvage • Infra-solutionism • Florida • Toxic commons • Verticality • Big Tech • The fantastic • Surfaces • Toxicity • Place • Slow violence • Reuse • Cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo sinensis) • Coal mining • Construction • Entanglement • Lützerath • Memory • Material Sovereignty • Heritage • Other-than-human • Extraction • Remediation • Energy transition • Toxic chemicals • Transmediation • Imaginary fieldwork • History of Remote Sensing of the Environment • Material flows • Queer Geophysics • Eastern Germany • Absence • Memorials • Venetian Lagoon • Carbon Removal • The dead • Underground • Narrative techniques • Sonic epistemologies • Legacy pollution • Quarry • Urban anthropology • Translucence • Sinkholes • High-rise housing • Mining • Space • Climate activism • Waste • Time • Amber • Racial Capitalism
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/LGSP/2785-2709/2025/01 | Published July 21, 2025 | Language en
Copyright © Simone M. Müller, Livia Cahn. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.