In the derelict riverside ruins of the former CUF/Quimigal industrial complex in Barreiro, Portugal — where the artist grew up across the river from Lisbon — Vhils detonated a wall carved with a portrait based on an archive photograph of a local factory worker. The reveal-and-implosion took about two seconds, captured with a ballistic camera at 2,000fps and stretched into a roughly 150-second slow-motion film, produced with Ghost Productions (direction: Alexandre Farto; photography direction: Vasco Viana; camera: Expanding Roots & José Pando Lucas; SFX: Pirotec & GJR). The film, plus laser/hand-carved stone Detritus fragments from the rubble, were released 23 June 2021 as Vhils's debut Nifty Gateway drop — his own words: 'a testament to ephemerality, even in the largest and most complex industrial infrastructures.'
The main film above is Rust Belt #3; the companion films #1, #2 and #4 (from the June 2021 drop) and #6–#7 (from the artist's studio channel), plus the drop's six Detritus fragment films (#4–#9), are gathered below. A related SuperRare 1/1, 'Hint' (March 2021), tagged by the artist barreiro/rustbelt, is embedded below.