Load Capacity—1150kg

Installation 

used lifting slings, heavy duty thread, thermal transfer printing on PVC labels

360×50×50 cm

Interconnected Gestures, Neun Kelche, Berlin (GER), 09.05.-28.06.2026

Load Capacity—1150kg centers on a woven wheel net. Suspended from the ceiling it forms a cradle-like structure just out of reach. The piece is made from lifting belts used in logistics and construction to secure heavy loads. It shifts an industrial vocabulary of tension, restraint, and load-bearing into an intimate register. The belts extend towards the floor, where their sewn labels—usually used for safety instructions and technical specifications—carry a text written by the artist.

Moving between bodily description and technical language, this text treats weight as something held in the body, passed between people, and carried over time. The work asks what it means to carry and be carried, to hold and be held. Kirchberg transforms a system designed to secure cargo into a web of dependency and care. During the exhibition, the installation is activated through the performative reading These Arms Could Lift Cars, in which the artist hangs in the net and reads each of the seven chapters aloud.

→These Arms Could Lift Cars

Performance

→ These Arms Could Lift Cars

Performance

35 min

These Arms Could Lift Cars is a performative reading in which the artist hangs in the net and reads aloud each of the seven chapters printed on the labels. Moving between bodily description and technical language, this text treats weight as something held in the body, passed between people, and carried over time. Throughout the performance, the artist drinks dyed water as purple mucus slowly drips from the net onto the floor, referring to the final text, mucus orgy, in which the weight carried through the chapters is released.

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Special thanks to: Neda Naujokaitė and the team of Neun Kelche

Photography: Dorothea Dittrich, Helia Jafarzadeh

With the support of: Neun Kelche e.V.