Water Cribs is an experimental video work about an esoteric component of Midwest water systems. The piece draws on nine months of ethnographic and historical research undertaken by Lily Scherlis and Reed McConnell in an attempt to better understand the story of Chicago’s water cribs and the generations of men who served as their caretakers. The video splices together found and fabricated audiovisual material to compose a fairytale of modern infrastructure.
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LILY SCHERLIS is an artist and writer whose performance lectures and video works have been featured in programming at the Renaissance Society, daadgalerie, the Smart Museum of Art, and the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts. Her writing has been published in Parapraxis, The Guardian, Cabinet, Jacket2, and elsewhere. She is a PhD candidate in English and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago.
REED McCONNELL is a writer and ethnographer whose work has appeared in publications including The Baffler, frieze, The Point, and Cabinet. She is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of Chicago, where she is writing a dissertation on environmental catastrophe and post-apocalyptic aesthetics in the California desert.
