Stone by Stone, Brick by Brick, Sheet by Sheet

This performative exercise builds on earlier field study into the former ENCI (Eerste Nederlandse Cement Industrie) factory in Maastricht - NL, where extraction, industrial labour, and material transformation shape social identity and ecological conditions. Shifting from documentation to activation, the project translates this socio-material context into an embodied collective process.

Participants reconstructed an enlarged raw photograph of the factory through coordinated, unscripted action. Without rehearsal, individual tasks gradually coalesced into a temporary organisational system, producing moments of dissonance, negotiation, and emergent hierarchy. The exercise operated as a microcosm of industrial dynamics, revealing how collaboration and coordination structure collective work.

Rather than representing industrial history, the work enacted its logics through participation. In doing so, it foregrounded the entanglement of capitalism, gendered labour, and social organisation in the ongoing “shaping” of industrial landscapes.