Project for a Concrete Truck
mixed media, motorized
23” x 24” x 24”
1990
On either side of the Fraser River south of Vancouver stand two vast competing cement-production plants, LaFarge on the southern shore and Heidelberg on the north. Between them they produce 2 ½ million tonnes of cement annually, largely for Vancouver and Seattle markets.
Annual world consumption of concrete now exceeds 3 billion tonnes (3 gigatons). Every tonne of concrete is 10-15% cement, concrete’s basic ingredient. Cement is made from calcinated limestone, through a process producing nearly ⅔ tonne of CO₂ for every tonne of cement. Twice as much concrete is used worldwide as the total of all other building materials combined. Outside of China, the largest cement companies are the German Heidelberg Group (80 million tonnes; owners of Ocean Cement), and the French group LaFarge (sold 100 million tonnes worldwide in 2007); China produced 1.3 billion tonnes of concrete in 2007, and consumed half the world’s total.
Texada Island north of Vancouver ships 6 million tonnes of limestone for cement every year to cement plants on the Fraser River: LeHigh/Heidelberg (1.27 million tonnes/year)on the north bank; LaFarge (1.2 million tonnes/year) on the south.
The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtse River, the world’s largest hydroelectric project, will consume 60 million tonnes of concrete.
This cornucopia of constant production is represented in a proposed work using an actual concrete truck, mounted vertically on an endless pour of concrete, and motorized so that the truck body rotates around the fixed drum, in a delirious image of the constant circulation of progress. The world’s uncontrolled and unregulated production of concrete serves as metaphoric replicant for liberal global capital’s universal expansion.