Ruby Reding

wetenschap & techniek, video, sculptuur, installatie, film, Experimenteel, Ecologie, Dekolonisatie, beeldhouwen, Audiovisueel, Artistiek onderzoek, Archieven

Lees voor

I am an artist based in Rotterdam, working with sculpture, moving image and poetry. My approach combines fieldwork, participatory workshops, writing, conversations with scientists, collecting scrap metal and visits to archives.

Through frictions and connections, I feel out our disconnection from resource supply chains and the ensuing alienation, intimacies and violences caused by calculative infrastructures. Tending to material conditions, my sculptural works draw out the relational dynamics, emotions and affects of scrap materials. My research is informed by feminist and decolonial responses to fieldwork, engaging with different sites and archives with reciprocity, collaboration and listening practices.

**all this distance (2025)** - 'all this distance' meditates on the frictions and connecting tissues of closeness and distance, machines and humans, conservation and pollution. The film draws out our need for control and order through the predictive infrastructures monitoring our atmospheres, finding the breaks and serendipity that seep through.

**reaching in contrails** - ‘reaching in contrails’ are a series of hanging sculptures composed of scrap aluminium, textiles, steel and resin. The work constitutes an affective and multi-scalar reach from scrap junk yards and the discarded zones of material, to a physical encounter with an arm-like gesture. Composed of tenuous and stable joins such as bolts and textile seams, the sculptures consider different forms of repairing and measuring. With aluminium castings of deep sea and telecommunications cables, borrowed from the Telecom museum in Rotterdam.

**reaching in contrails (detail), 2025**

**leaving the tributary (2024)** - ‘leaving the tributary’ is a film and installation exploring liquidity, intimacy and affect, and the unfurling connotations with time and damp interiors due to the energy/climate crisis and poor housing infrastructure. The film combines footage of the river Wandle in South London alongside a scene in which a lover/friend wakes up in a bed of water inside a dark room. A figure is searching along the river at night and in the daytime, discovering fly-tipped garbage and the mechanical noises of factories including the Wandsworth National Grid.

**‘feeling/folding the tributary’** - ‘feeling/folding the tributary’ is a series of collages created from photographs of local government archives associated with the river Wandle, including pollution and flooding issues, from the 18th Century to the present day. The works also include details from Enclosure Acts, which privatised land in the UK, expelling people from their homes across Croydon in the 19th Century. These archives are woven with stills from recent films and iPhone photographs from the artist’s personal life, including small moments and hiking trips walking through different privatised lands.

**kistéXdrifter (2022)** - “kistéXdrifter was shot in October 2022 in Athens during a residency at Snetha Project Space. The film dives into complex issues of toxicity and biodiversity, initiating an in-situ research at different river locations near Athens, currently in a process of peri-urbanization, creating a hybrid space between a city and a countryside. Her camera follows a protagonist both in the fringes and the center of Athens.” —Curator, Eleni Riga

**P.S. Tracker (2023)** - This sound work features cello by Slow Cooked, a conversation with the artist’s family member, field recordings, Youtube tourist clips and spoken word.

Group Residency

Datum: 15-08-2025 t/m 12-09-2025

Locatie: Scottish Sculpture Workshop

In samenwerking met: Scottish Sculpture Workshop

I'm participating in a group residency, focussed on technical skills in metalwork and research on aluminium supply chains.

https://www.ssw.org.uk/

Language(s)

Datum: 06-08-2025 t/m 06-08-2025

Locatie: Garage Rotterdam

In samenwerking met: Sweet Scope Studio

Energy Literacy for a Just Transition

Datum: 04-07-2025 t/m 13-07-2025

Locatie: E-WERK

In samenwerking met: Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis

How can we understand the different ways energy manifests in landscapes, social relations, infrastructures and heritage spaces? This summer school invited 12 students (Masters, Research Masters, PhD) to explore questions and contribute firsthand to the transformation of E-WERK Luckenwalde, a former brown coal power station turned contemporary art space just outside of Berlin.

Heating Systems

Datum: 10-10-2024 t/m 13-10-2024

Locatie: A Tale of A Tub

Exhibition organised between the class of '25 at Piet Zwart Institute and A Tale of A Tub. ‘Higher education is drying up, we’re left with shells and pips, little piles that we are spending time sorting together. We’ve been self-organising in the basement, a gathering in times of prohibition.’

https://a-tub.org/en/events/heating-systems

Deze kunstenaar heeft nog geen toekenningen.