Limestone carcass (burnt limestone, Mannersdorf, quarry of cement industry), air proof glass lintel,
stainless steel, PP rainwater pipe
22.2 kg CaO & 13 kg CO2 emissions, 130 x 43 x 43 cm
10.6 kg CaO & 6.4 kg CO2 emissions, 125 x 43 x 43 cm
16.3 kg CaO & 9.1 kg CO2 emissions, 130 x 43 x 43 cm
For the Burnt Future Past series, limestone chunks were fired at 900° C for around 40 hours. (Traditional lime production) Limestone, which was formed in Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge 16 - 14 million years ago from red calcareous algae and shells, is therefore of organic origin and has a high proportion of bound CO2 , which is released during the firing process. Up to 40% of the weight of the stone chunks, also known as calcium carbonate (CaCO3), escapes in the form of CO2 emissions. The limestone initially retains its shape, but deep cracks appear and most of the color has escaped. This quicklime carcass (CaO) is thirsty for water and disintegrates into small pieces within a few days if it is able to extract moisture from the air. In the absence of air, however, the form remains intact and the burnt lime could be slaked at a later date.
The work addresses the effects of burning fossil fuels and materials and the need to protect the lithosphere. Several thousand tons of limestone are blasted out of the Leitha Mountains every day for cement production, fired at 1450° C with the addition of clay to form cement clinker and finally ground into cement. Limestone extraction represents one of the largest mass movements in industrial processing, the effects on biodiversity are serious and the CO2 emissions of the cement industry amount to around 7% of global CO2 emissions.
Since 2020, the global stock of man-made mass has exceeded the total sum of biomass on Earth – around 90 percent of which is building materials. In the project Reverse Imagining Vienna, two sculptors and nine writers took a Viennese Gründerzeit building and the Prater Bridge, which crosses over the Danube, as material and speculative anchors in which to gain perspectives on sustainable relationships with inanimate matter. Referring to so-called reverse engineering, the two structures were deconstructed and recomposed in a historical, material-analytical, poetic and visionary way using reverse imagining.
