Research Institute for
Sustainability | at GFZ

David Rueter

Fellow

E-Mail

david [dot] rueter [at] rifs-potsdam [dot] de

David Rueter and Marissa Lee Benedict are a collaborative duo of visual artists. Together they produce site-adapted sculptures, video installations, drawings, performances, collective platforms, and publications. Working through architectural objects and systemic conditions hidden in plain sight, the duo writes and performs scores that unsettle infrastructural operations and bureaucratic processes. The objects and (re)enacted collective gestures that emerge, on screen and in space, become strange and frictional encounters with residual legal, architectural, technological, and territorial rituals that belong to official worlds. Benedict and Rueter's current research sits at the intersection of AI, institutional memory, cybernetics, psychotherapy, and regulatory approaches to sustainability.

  • 2016—2021, Assistant Professor, Art and Technology, University of Oregon (US)
  • 2015—2016, Visiting Assistant Professor, New Media Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago (US)
  • 2015, Lecturer, Art and Technology Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (US)

Select Recent Public Presentations and Residencies

  • 2027 (forthcoming), exhibition commission,The Lab, San Francisco (US)
  • 2026, "Metrica No. 5," solo exhibition, Rupert and the Martynas MaŽvydas National Library of Lithuania, Vilnius (LT)
  • 2026, salon (residency presentation), Air Berlin Alexanderplatz / Mondriaan Funds, Berlin (DE)
  • 2025, residency, Nida Art Colony (LT)
  • 2024, "Metrica, Vol. III," solo exhibition, Center for Art Research, University of Oregon (US)
  • 2024, residency, Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco (US)
  • 2024, group exhibition and panel discussion, "Global Energy Cultures," Msheireb Museums in partnership with Georgetown University, Doha (QA)
  • 2023, group exhibition, "Fear of Property," The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, IL (US)
  • 2023, artists in residence, School of Art & Art History, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL (US)
  • 2021, group exhibition, "Faz escuro mas eu canto," 34th Bienal de São Paulo (BR)
  • 2018, group exhibition, *Dimensions of Citizenship, US Pavilion, 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (IT)
  • 2018, group exhibition, "Unthought Environments," The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, IL (US)

  • Large Language Models
  • Collective memory and collective experience
  • Infrastructure and the built environment
  • Performance and documentation
  • Language, body, and technology
  • Scale and seriality

Selected Publications prior to joining the RIFS

  • Benedict, Marissa Lee, David Rueter, and Daniel de Paula. "deposition." Edited by Karsten Lund, Mousse Publishing, 2023.

Selected

  • 2025-2026, "Metrica, Vol. V-X," Project grant and commission, Mondriaan Funds (NL), Rupert (LT), and the Lithuanian Council for Culture (LT)
  • 2016-2017, National Endowment for the Arts“Art Works" Grant for Gary Lights Open Works (GLOW), IN (US)
  • 2013, Honorary Mention in Interactive Art, Prix Ars, Electronica 2013, Linz (AT)