Among the endless makeup tutorials, coordinated dances and people cutting things open to see if they are made of cake, there is one genre of social media video that has proved to be an unexpected hit: life on building sites.
On Instagram, there is a pair of Dutch brickies who, with cameras strapped to their helmets and microphones attached to their tools, bring the satisfying mortar slops and trowel scrapes of bricklaying to rapt viewers. There is a Canadian heavy machine operator who uses his digger with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel, thrilling his followers with ever more elaborate tricks – from flipping bottles, to flicking open a cigarette lighter. On TikTok, there is a Spanish woodsman who, from behind the controls of his alarming contraption, can chop down a tree, strip it of bark, and cut it into logs in seconds. His dramatic feats of forestry have been viewed more than 100m times.
Welcome to the world of construction social media, a fascinating phenomenon documented in all its theatrical glory in a new exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. On a cluster of screens in the gallery, gigantic diggers pirouette down precipitous slopes, while buckets of cement are hurled gracefully through the air. Masons strike their hammers in rhythmic unison, as plasterers launch dollops of render against a wall with expert accuracy. A group of workers jump up and down on a plank to drive a pile foundation deeper into the ground, while bricks are passed up a succession of ladders by a human chain of juggler-builders, alongside other acrobatic scenes that could be clips from a Jacques Tati film. It is a mesmerising building site ballet of pouring, grinding, hammering and polishing, the entire process of construction – from material extraction to the final coat of paint – performed in a dizzying loop.
“The people doing the actual work to make buildings rarely come to the foreground,” says Hester Keijser, curator of photography and new media at the CCA. “Architecture has always been disseminated by professional photographers, commissioned by the architects or clients. But these are people bringing their smartphones to work, choosing what they want to share and how they portray themselves.”
Together, the montaged clips provide an eye-opening window on what goes on behind the construction hoardings, high up on the scaffolding, and behind the factory doors. It portrays a world of workers who have the skill of Olympic athletes, people who have perfected their trades and want to show off their talents to an enthusiastic audience. They might not get much praise from their site foremen, but there are thousands of riveted fans waiting to comment on their #madskills with a string of fire emojis. “Work smart, not hard,” is the ultimate seal of approval.
The clusters of clips – elegantly edited and compiled in thematic sequences by Dutch artist Luuk Smits – are paired with interviews conducted with some of the content-creator contractors over Zoom. Sitting in the cabins of their machines, or perched on their newly built walls, they muse on how and why they started making these videos, and the surprising online community that has formed around them.
Ceejay Turner, a young heavy equipment operator from Coquitlam in British Columbia, says he started posting videos on Instagram to create a “digital resumé” when he was looking for jobs. “I wanted to show companies what I’m capable of, and my work ethic,” he says. “It’s kinda taken off from there.”
One of Turner’s clips shows him using his big mechanical digger arm to lasso hooks on the end of a pair of chains around two tiny steel hoops that protrude from the top of a big concrete block (something that could be done much more easily by hand – but that’s not the point). “While i wana hate on this for being lazy,” says one commenter on the post, “its just too damn impressive.” “Truly amazing what men can accomplish to not get out of a chair,” adds another. For those unfamiliar with building-site hierarchies, a third commenter offers this explanation: “A good operator never gets down from the equipment even if it’s quicker by hand because then you’d be called a laborer.”
Jolly Dutch bricklayers, Jordy and Rolf, have found that their videos have accidentally tapped into an audience hungry for ASMR tingles. “The people like it when we scrape the mortar or something,” says Jordy, “or you press down the brick and see the mortar come out. They like that. We have special microphones for it.” They say they sometimes receive messages from bricklayers in other countries telling them that they’re doing it wrong, but they are motivated to continue by many more messages from fans who say their videos inspired them to go to college to study bricklaying. “That makes it worth putting in all the effort,” he adds.
Spanish forester Diego Mediavilla – whose fearsome mechanical jaws make quick work of trees – says he receives quite a lot of online abuse from people who see his work as destructive. “People think you’re destroying the planet,” he says. “I get a lot of comments on my videos saying, ‘You’re destroying it.’ But I’m not destroying it, I’m helping. Helping to build. I started making videos for that reason. To teach people a little about the forestry sector.”
The clips are presented in the museum without any implicit or explicit critique, allowing visitors to take in the full spectrum of quarrying, tree-felling and steel smelting that goes into making the built environment, and make up their own minds. You might wince at the gushing waterfalls of concrete being funnelled down ever deeper holes, but then marvel at the man dangling from a digger arm to smooth down his freshly laid floor surface, while another is held by two co-workers, as if in a wheelbarrow race, as he drags his mould along a cement kerb. Health and safety inspectors would balk at some of the practices on show – not just from parts of the world with less stringent building site regulations – but the overarching effect of it all is to leave you dazzled by the sheer ingenuity. Watching decorative plasterers swirl coloured gloop on to a concrete column with their gloved hands will give you a whole new respect for the art of fake marbling.
Other tips and tricks might benefit from a “don’t try this at home” label. Don’t have a bucket on a rope to hand? No problem, you can simply throw a cement-laden shovel up to your friend on the floor above. Can’t reach the protruding bit of steel that needs trimming on the floor below? Fear not, you can just dangle a whirring angle-grinder from the end of its cable. In some cases it’s hard to tell if these are real everyday practices, or if they might just be doing it for the ’gram. As Keijser puts it: “There’s a lot of choreography involved. The construction site is a place of theatre, and these people are performing in it.”
For the workers themselves, the construction social media ecosystem has been a revelation – an outlet for sharing tips, exchanging techniques, and building up a broader recognition of what they do.
“I’ve found the construction industry on social media super friendly,” says Turner. “Everyone wants to help each other, there’s no one out trying to be better than anyone else.” He also thinks it has helped perceptions of the industry and attracted a younger generation to consider the career path. “A lot of people don’t really know what we do. ‘You go out and dig holes and you’re dirty,’ and that kind of stuff. Now that everyone’s posting online they can see and understand a day in the life … I know a lot of people who have never been on a construction site, and all of a sudden they follow 20 construction pages. It’s really cool.”
