Infrastructure is the pattern of movement of social form, writes Lauren Berlant. In times of crisis it is clear to identify what menaces “the endurance of the world,” life as we know it, they say. It’s harder, they say, to bear the ambivalences of the things we want (sex, democracy, even life itself), the things that require us to manage “being in proximity in the awkard and violent ordinary.” (Berlant, 2016)
Reservoir (Series A, B, C) share a simple sculptural procedure executed in relation to circulating and non-circulating architectures and institutional forms. The series is one of dependencies and displacements, crystallizing patterns of social choreographies and elemental forces.
Each of the series begins with one or more 5-gallon water bottle preforms—standard “blanks” molded in China and shipped to factories worldwide. Instead of blowing the bottle preform into a standardized steel mold, as is done in industry, Benedict and Rueter expand the forms organically into architectures and objects with either high pressure air or boiling water, . The process requires closeness and the potential for violence; attention to engineering and improvisation; and unfolding relations between the whole and the fragment.
Reservoir (Series A): 5-gallon bottles preforms are blown into architectures.
Reservoir (Series B): the blown bottles from Reservoir (Series A) are cut out of their architectures and re-situated in new institutional contexts.
In Reservoir (Series C): 5-gallon bottles preforms are blown into standardized forms of furniture sourced from social institutions (e.g chairs, shelves, etc. from schools, libraries, government offices).