For Cultural Transformation

Future Maastricht and the iconic ENCI site join forces to reimagine a post-industrial landscape through contemporary art, research, and emerging technologies.

From extraction to expression, the project activates ENCI as a living cultural infrastructure — where material legacy becomes narrative, and the territory opens up to public imagination and collective renewal.

30

15

Cultural activities

Days

A STRATEGIC ALLIANCE

THE INDUSTRIALLEGACY

Founded in 1926, ENCI (Eerste Nederlandse Cement Industrie) played a central role in shaping the economic, urban, and human landscape of Maastricht. The extraction of marl and the production of cement marked the rhythm of the region’s twentieth-century industrialisation, transforming Sint-Pietersberg into a massive productive infrastructure. But this is not just a story of machines and numbers — it is a story of hands, faces, and generations who literally built the city.

Through an interactive timeline, this chapter retraces key moments in ENCI’s journey: from its foundation to the postwar expansion, and from the first signs of decline to the site's current transformation.

The scars of extraction, now softened by water and wild growth, tell the story of a nature that resists erasure. Industrial paths have become trails of rediscovery, while the sheer limestone walls have turned into emotional topographies. This chapter weaves together immersive imagery and voices from the community: those who worked amid the roar of machinery, those who witnessed the valley transform, and those who now wander through these voids, as if they were full of stories.

THE LANDSCAPE

"To look at the ENCI landscape today is to read a layered palimpsest".

MATERIAL MEMORY

A worn-out work glove.

An old factory ID badge.

A notebook filled with handwritten shift schedules.

These are modest objects — yet they carry entire worlds.

The material memory of ENCI emerges from what remains: fragments, traces, evidence.

Archival photographs, floor plans, factory records, and site mappings alternate with digitised and physical artifacts, composing a visual and sonic archive that reactivates time.

A narrated voiceover accompanies the visitor through these silent presences, drawing them to the surface as if they were still pulsing beneath the stone.

This is not an archive to observe. It is a body to walk through.

Predict the Future by creating it, Together!

The collaboration between Future and the former ENCI site is rooted in the belief that industrial heritage is not static legacy, but a dynamic and reactivable infrastructure for thought and creation.

“Reimagining Industry Through Art” is not conceived as a traditional exhibition. It is a program of site-specific interventions — immersive, performative, sculptural, and technological — developed in direct dialogue with the landscape, memory, and material culture of ENCI.

Each project activates a critical and poetic relationship with the site: engaging with its post-industrial identity not as a backdrop, but as a generative system of meanings.

Art becomes a vector for interpreting transformation, creating new imaginaries and opening pathways for civic and cultural regeneration.

Future acts here as both curatorial agency and institutional catalyst, working to connect artists, researchers, and audiences in an expanded field of production and reflection.

At "Echoes of Industry," we believe in fostering dialogue that extends beyond the conventional. The past, present, and future of industry are inextricably linked with our environment, and the voices advocating for its protection are louder and more critical than ever. This section delves into the powerful movements and crucial conversations shaping the environmental landscape today.

Echoes of Action: Protests, Discussions, and the Future of Our Planet

1 SETTEMBRE

OPENING

The Future of ENCI is not designed alone.

It is built through collective gestures, unexpected alliances, and the listening of those brave enough to imagine

Location Info

Visit the Enci x Future Maastricht Museum and Gallery for a unique cultural experience and territorial valorization.

Gallery

Maastricht, Netherlands, 1234AB

Museum

10 AM - 6 PM