Ila Bêka & Louise Lemoine / France, Belgium, 2024 / 30 min. / French language / English subtitles

This series of nine short films was created in collaboration between the architectural-film duo Beka & Lemoine and the well-known Brussels collective Rotor, which focuses on ecology and recycling in architecture. The camera follows nine industrial sites within a 200 km radius of Brussels, focusing on the circulation of materials in the contemporary economy. The films raise questions about the impact of industrial activity on the landscape, the processes of material transformation, and the ways in which industry produces waste and then disposes of it.

Practical information:

• The screening is available all day from 9:00 to 18:00, they always start on the hour and half hour.
• The films run in an 30-minute loop.
• The screening takes place in the Black Hall instead of the exhibition Prague Tomorrow? The Connected City.
• The Prague Tomorrow? Connected City exhibition is not accessible during the screening.

The event is part of the Film and Architecture Festival.The film Transmutation was created on the occasion of the exhibition Rotor. Entangled Matter, presented at Bozar – Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels and organized by A+ Architecture (October 2024 – January 2025).

Nine locations – nine short films:

• Impact Furniture, Oxfam Vilvorde (Belgium): salvage and recycling of office furniture
• Scrap yard Wim de Voeght Honselersdijk (Netherlands): preparation for recycling of horticultural greenhouse structures
• Carmeuse Wanze (Belgium): limestone quarry and lime kilns
• Immobilière du Terril De Pont-de-Loup Aiseau-Presles (Belgium): recovery of red and black shale from a former spoil tip
• Merbes-Sprimont Golzinne (Belgium): underground quarry for black marble
• Rumst (Belgium): former clay pits transformed into landfills then into a natural area
• Carrière de la Hazotte Anthisnes (Belgium): salvage and preparation for reuse of roadworks materials and stone elements
• De Meuter Brussels (Belgium): selective demolition site
• Wunderland Kalkar Kalkar (Germany): amusement park developed in a former nuclear power station (never started up)

1. Rotor – Entangled Matter

Most material flows start from some sort of underground ‘reservoir’ from which ‘raw materials’ are extracted to produce goods that ultimately tend to end up back there too, in various types of landfill. Some material flows can be highly complex, with multiple passages to and from the subsurface, but also dispersal into the atmosphere (usually through a combustion process) and into the landscape.

Since its inception, Rotor has played a key role in promoting reuse through diverse activities, such as launching a salvage company in Brussels, helping various building professionals adopt reuse, developing diverse solutions to facilitate reuse, and encouraging public authorities to adapt regulatory frameworks to encourage reuse. The film shown speaks to the complexity that characterises the organisation of material flows in today’s economy. It weaves together entangled narratives that address broader issues, including the scale of industrial activity, the relationship to work, the impact on the landscape from the movement of materials, waste management, the changes brought about by climate change, the role of citizens’ initiatives and the possible trajectories of infrastructure conversion.

2. The Becoming and Unbecoming of Waste

The Carabinier mine was located in the heart of the Belgian coal region around Charleroi. It was worked between 1918 and 1955. The shale fraction with too low a coal content was dumped on the surface and in the former clay pits left behind by previous brickmaking activity, gradually forming the spoil tips so typical of coal-mining areas. While it was worked, the Carabinier mine produced two spoil tips called Terril n°1 du Carabinier and Terril n°2 du Carabinier. Today, it is the latter that is being used.

In less than a century, the village of Pont-de-Loup has seen a small mountain, almost 120 metres high, form and erode at an accelerated rate! First, the industry dug into the soil to extract clay. The resulting holes were then filled with waste from underground mining activities. This waste was so abundant that it formed high mounds across the landscape. These mounds were then recognised as potential reservoirs of resources. Exploiting them transformed this stock of sediment into a flow of industrial resources that end up in various types of product, some of which, like concrete, will return below the surface of the ground for foundation or filling work. The industry terraforms the topography of the landscape, and the limit between what is above and below ground shifts with it.

3. Underground Wealth

The last underground quarry in Belgium is located in Golzinne, in the province of Namur, where Mazy black marble, world famous for its incredibly fine grain, is extracted. The quarry has been owned by the Merbes-Sprimont company since 1928. On average, 250 m³ of rock is extracted annually from the quarry, of which 10 to 15 per cent (around 800 tonnes) can be sold after processing. These ratios are quite common in the stone industry, where large volumes of soil and rock have to be moved to get to the commercially viable parts.

The profitability of the operation is due to the Mazy marble’s unique aesthetic. It has often been used above ground in prestigious projects that take advantage of its unique surface – from the Palace of Versailles to the very building where the Entangled Matter exhibition took place, Victor Horta’s Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. Today, it is much sought after for the restoration of historical monuments but also for contemporary design projects. It is not uncommon to find small batches of this marble on the reclamation market, where its high cultural and economic value almost always justifies its salvage.

4. When a Quarry Transforms into a Salvage Centre

Carrière de la Hazotte is a family business that sells paving materials. Some of its stock is new material fresh from their quarry, but much of it are materials reclaimed from roadworks. As the company name suggests, it was originally a sandstone quarry. Although the quarry is still operational, it is now mainly occupied by heaps of paving stones salvaged from towns and cities in a radius of around 200 kilometres from the quarry’s location.

Salvaging, processing and sorting these inherently robust materials is often quick and easy (provided the correct equipment is available). However, their reuse potential is widely ignored in public tenders which prioritize the speed of roadworks, or even explicitly excluding reuse altogether. As a result, the local supply of salvaged pavement materials has been declining for some time in Belgium. Furthermore, specialized companies sometimes have to export to other continents. Competition from cheap new materials quarried in regions where labour is much less costly or from concrete paving often limits the sale of salvaged elements to specific applications where their rustic appearance is of value.