Reservoir (Private)

Water as a metric of accumulation and a mechanism of control

The work examines the transformation of water from a common good into a commodity within contemporary practices of privatizing public resources. At the center of the installation, a transparent cylindrical volume operates both as a reservoir and as a mechanism of measurement and accumulation. The numerical markings (100–1000) strip water of its ecological and social dimensions, reducing it to a unit of calculation, value, and exchange.

The pipes that surround and feed the cylinder form an extended extraction network, evoking infrastructures of exploitation. They draw from a shared natural substrate and redirect the resource toward a centralized, controlled point, indifferent to consequence. The direction of this flow embodies a recurring logic: the concentration of resources and wealth through their removal from the collective.

The ground, deeply cracked and fragmented, functions as a material trace of this process. Subsidence and sharp variations between its plates suggest not only environmental degradation but exhaustion produced by systematic overextraction. The fact that the soil spills beyond the boundaries of the installation reinforces the sense that these effects do not remain contained, but extend into the neutral ground of the viewer.

The installation foregrounds a clear relation: water is accumulated, measured, and controlled by mechanisms of power, while the ground—and the societies dependent on it—is progressively weakened. The work operates as a critique of the dynamics between resource concentration and the depletion of the very conditions from which life emerges.

Materials: Water - Plexiglass – Soil – EPS Polystyrene

Dimensions: 150 (L) x 110 (W) x 160 (H) cm.