Do you feel like you know Ostrava? That its industrial face has nothing left to surprise you with? Let us prove you wrong and take a journey through our field guide Toxic Dust to places you wouldn't normally see. Author and architect Rosario Talevi (Berlin), co-creator and field geologist Jan Lenart (Ostrava), and photographer Julian Irlinger (Berlin) will transport you into the fascinating, wild, and ever-changing landscape of our city.

This guide is not an indictment of the industrial past. On the contrary—it is a poetic tool that seeks answers to how we live in this specific landscape today, how nature responds to it, and how to turn the problem of toxicity into a challenge.

The publication is the result of an intensive exploration of Ostrava’s terrain, hundreds of kilometers walked, deep conversations, and the discovery of traces left in the ground by more than a century of intensive mining. Walking became a method for looking beneath the surface—quite literally.

Where will the guide take you?

In seven chapters, Toxic Dust offers a fascinating glimpse into places that humans may have abandoned, but where life has certainly not fallen silent. Fire, water, and lush vegetation are reclaiming the deserted space.

You will learn, for example, about a source of mineral water in Ostrava—a thermal spring roaring right next to a busy road. A pipe protruding above the river spews an incredible 15,000 cubic meters of geothermal water a day, enough to fill six swimming pools.

Or about the tilted Heřmanice Pond, where the ground is sinking due to mining activity, literally causing the water surface to tilt. Why is this place nicknamed “Ostrava's Vietnam,” and what are thousands of catfish doing in shallow, salty water full of minerals from the depths of the earth? Read an excerpt.

Where can you purchase the guide?

The guide is available in both Czech and English versions. You can purchase it at PLATO Ostrava and at the Zabriskie bookstore in Berlin. It costs 60 CZK [approx. €2.50]. It was designed by Sebastián Garbrecht (Persona Studio).

The Toxic Dust installation is part of the current exhibition Soil and Friends.

The publication Toxic Dust was published in 2025 by PLATO as part of the Octopus Press platform, emerging as an output of the residency project Reading the Garden, Reading Ostrava.