Christoph Weber

Tuffeau (evacuation – original), Tuffeau (evacuation – copy), 2025

For Vulnerable Bodies Christoph Weber gathered blocks of the famously “vivant” local limestone “Tuffeau” partly overgrown with moss and grass. After 3D scanning the original state of each block he performed sculptural acts of draining and emptying on them. Eventually the digital data was milled into freshly quarried Tuffeau and the copies are presented along the “exploited” and altered original.

Achille Mbembe's latest philosophical work ‘Brutalism’ provides the template for Christoph Weber's approach to connect the brutality of geological extractivism to the exploitation of vulnerable bodies by data extraction and the reduction of life to brute matter. Solo Show, Vulnerable Bodies, Les Moulins de Paillard, 2025, curated by Shelly De Vito & James Porter.

The exhibition is conceived as an analysis of precarious conditions in the contemporary world and establishes a thematic link between the vulnerability of the human body, the biosphere and the matter of the earth’s crust. The title ‘Vulnerable Bodies’ for sculptural settings made of stone, concrete and wax is an allusion to the inseparability of social and ecological crises, refers to Judith Butler’s concept of vulnerability, to Anselm Jappe’s analysis of concrete as a weapon of mass construction in capitalism, as well as to Corine Pelluchon and Achille Mbembe’s description of the present day as the age of the living.

Mark, 2025

Two parts: beeswax, colophony, wood tar, paraffin wax – 30 x 68 x 73 cm; concrete, wire rope lifting loops, 67 x 50 x 70 cm

Achille Mbembe’s work Brutalism analyzes how ecological disaster, the migrant crisis, technological innovation, and the persistence of colonialist thought in the West symptomatize the increased reduction of life to brute matter. It transfers the language of geological extraction processes to the (digital) exploitation of human bodies in the 21st century and provides the template for my attempt to connect the brutality of extractivist processes to the exploitation and erasure of vulnerable bodies.

In my work, concrete often becomes a proxy for the human body - my first work with broken concrete was a reference to the coverage of the second Intifada. [Untitled (Chunks), 2004] The concrete rubble became a media representative of the injured body. Today’s events in Gaza and Israel are a further dramatic escalation of violence, still mediated by the shattered concrete of Palestinian cities.

The cracks and fractures in my concrete works are on the one hand due to this media origin, on the other hand they are a reaction to the superiority of the “concrete system”, a call to action to disrupt the existing Betonitis. However, the fracture can also become the aggressor, as can be seen in one of the new productions. The frequent reversal of roles or change of perspective is an important part of my work - identifying with the “victim” (e.g. soft concrete that leans or slips) or the “perpetrator” (e.g. sharp-edged broken concrete) occurs, as I think, depending on the context and in a quite ambivalent way.

Concrete also becomes a representative of universalist enlightenment, a representative of unshakeable belief in progress, a dominator of nature and a destructive system of global dimensions: as the main component of the technosphere, it stands for modernity like no other material - the extraction of its ingredients cement from fossil limestone and sand and gravel from geological debris is taking place on a rapidly increasing scale without any balance with planetary limits and has a considerable impact on the biosphere.

The exhibition rooms are the production rooms of a former paper factory, whose primary drive was a river turbine before fossil fuels took over the role of energy source. The buildings are made of local (fossil) limestone, the so-called tuffeau. The Les Moulins de Paillard facility is an ideal place to reflect on that cooperation with nature must succeed instead of its exploitation; how the development from the age of manufacture or early factories to the industrial revolution and to the exploitation of human-physical information as a raw material of the 21st century took place. Where and when were the conditions for exceeding a balance written in? Is the legacy of the European Enlightenment responsible for these developments? From today’s perspective, how do we assess the substance that is appreciatively referred to as “patrimoine” (cultural heritage), but which often bears all too many traces of patriarchy?

Tuffeau (evacuation – original)

Found object, local building bloc of tuffeau

Tuffeau (evacuation – copy)

CNC-milled in freshly quarried Tuffeau

Tuffeau (fracturation), 2025

3 drill extensions from the limestone extraction quarry in Mannersdorf

Steel, ratching straps

14m long, suspended to a height of one meter.

Voracious Flux, 2024

Mannersdorf limestone chunk with drilled hole, concrete

Overall dimensions approx. (H)64 x 650 x 200 cm

Limestone (Cement Industry Limestone Quarry, Mannersdorf), Concrete (with its cement being from the same factory)

96 x 73 x 63 cm

Fossil Continuum , 2023

Limestone (Cement Industry Limestone Quarry, Mannersdorf), Concrete (with its cement being from the same factory)

2 parts, total 53 x 46 x 68 cm

Beton (lehnend), 2019

Concrete, 170 x 80 x 7 cm (before the bend)

Burnt Future Past, 2024

Limestone carcass (burnt limestone, Mannersdorf, cement industry quarry), glass lintel (airproof), stainless steel, PP rainwater pipe

10.6 kg CaO & 6.4 kg CO2 emissions, (H) 125 x 43 x 43 cm

16.3 kg CaO & 9.1 kg CO2 emissions, (H) 130 x 43 x 43 cm

22.2 kg CaO & 13 kg CO2 emissions, (H) 130 x 43 x 43 cm

Tuffeau (désemplissement – original), Tuffeau (désemplissement – copy), Untitled (tuffeau, déplétion), 2025

Tuffeau (désemplissement – original), 2025

Tuffeau, lime from burnt tuffeau

sechs komma vier, 2021

Concrete

45 x 68 x 1100 cm

In 6.4 concrete copies of a piece of limestone from the cement industry is as much cement as the industry would have obtained from the original limestone.