From the pile of books in the bedside cabinet to the neatly folded duvet, this bedroom looks almost ready for its owner to turn in for the night.

“Twenty-five years ago the entire 50,000 population of the Ukrainian town of Pripyat was evacuated within three hours. They left most of what they had here as they were told they are leaving only for a couple of days, but none of them has ever returned. The last thing they saw upon leaving their hometown was the forth block of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, devastated by a powerful explosion.”

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They say there are secret cemeteries beneath the sprawling grounds of the Central State Hospital. They say bodies and pieces of bodies were dumped in trenches after being taken apart in the laboratory. It takes three people to perform an autopsy: someone to do the cutting, another to weigh the organs, and a third to record the results. Blood and other fluids drained through the tiled floor and ran beneath one hundred acres of landscaped gardens before spilling into the White River.

Copper has anti-bacterial properties. Northern light is the best for viewing bacteria through a microscope. There’s much to learn at the little museum in the old pathology building at the defunct hospital. Tumors, trauma, and congenital defects. Degenerative disease and inflammation. Next to a yellowing brain in a jar, a card says, “Patient never displayed peculiar behavior until he was wounded in the head during the Spanish-American war. He became childish but was able to work as a farmer until the age of seventy when he turned violent and institutional supervision became necessary.” Bottles of sulfate of ammonia, benzoic acid, smelling salts, and ‘chemicals’ line the dark wood shelves. Hanging from the walls are dozens of sepia portraits of stern men with beakers and skeletons in the background.

Read the full articel by James A. Reeves at the Bureau of Manufactured History

“Question : If there was to be a third episode, what would you want to see it in? More of the same, something new, less interviews, more interviews? Please email suggestions to contact@crackthesurface.com”

Episode II takes a look at a small collection of explorers from across the pond in America and Canada, focusing on their participation and experiences within their local and global exploring community.

Filmed over six weeks resulting in over 1.5TB of raw footage from locations such as New York, Indianapolis, Chicago, Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Montreal.

silentUK

Guest article by Seamus Murphy of Trenditionist at urbanghostsmedia

If you visit the city of Chemnitz in the German Free State of Saxony, your first impression is going to be distinctly Soviet. You might regret you came, even wishing you went to one of Germany’s more alluring destinations like Munich, Hamburg or Berlin. But it’s important to persevere, because hidden under Chemnitz’s grey and gritty exterior, it’s possible to unearth a plethora of historical riches.

Not far away from the beautiful city of Dresden, Chemnitz was named Karl-Marx-Stadt between 1953 and 1990. German reunification tore the heart out of the city’s traditional industrial backbone. Struggling to compete in a new Germany driven by economic powerhouses in cities like Munich and Stuttgart, Chemnitz started to decline. Its factories and apartment blocks were torn down or abandoned as people flooded west in search of new opportunities.

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The Abode of Chaos (French: Demeure du Chaos) is a Museum of Contemporary Art located in Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d’Or, a small town in the vicinity of Lyon, France. It is a living sum of more than 2,500 artworks, performed by many different artists and Thierry Ehrmann, CEO of Groupe Serveur.

The artwork is based around the transformation of Ehrmann’s 17th century home into a replica war zone, at contrast with the peaceful village in which it is located. The Abode of Chaos has been the subject of an on-going law suit from the local mayor’s office. Ehrmann has been ordered to pay a fine for unauthorised construction under town planning laws but has not been ordered to restore his home to its original condition. Today he is condemned by the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court : he has to recondition his outer walls or pay a compensation.