Earthworks/Mineworks: creating shared visions for postmined landscapes/landshapes

摘要

In mining regions across the world, new topography is being built daily, layer by layer. Symbolic of the primacy of industry and economics in the past 150 years, this material is a message for future generations, recounting the history of its makers and reminding us of hundreds of thousands of workers who spent their time digging massive holes in pursuit of essential resources. The new topography is often absurdist. There are no artists, designers or community advocates involved in creating alternate shared visions. It is important to reflect on what this means for the future of these innumerable sites and, more broadly, the state of the land in a postmining future. Currently, rehabilitation of postmined land focusses on restoring the site to its original ecological (but not aesthetic) state prior to the mining intervention. With a growing disconnect between satisfying ecological needs and envisioning an appropriate response to the landscape, there is a critical need for creative intervention. This paper investigates perceptions of mining and postmining landscapes, questioning the aesthetically driven emphasis on the "natural." It proposes instead an opportunity to reframe the way we look at overburden and landscape impacts from mining, exploring the possibility of imagined postmine landscapes unburdened by traditional aesthetic expectations. Concepts from Land Art, and Earthworks in particular, are presented as models that merit serious consideration for reimagined space and novel place making. These mine works landscapes, conceived by regional stakeholder round tables, have the capacity to be built by regional mining consortia as a foundation for sustainable postmining economies. Postmine regeneration offers both the motivation and the basic materials to create an altogether new environment from a blank slate. Few circumstances allow the opportunity to truly explore a reenvisioning of the land on the monumental scale available in these postmined landscapes.