Metrica No. 5, 2026

Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT
Rupert, Vilnius, LT
Marissa Lee Benedict and David Rueter

Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.

Edited excerpt of the three-channel video.
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert
undefined, Metrica No. 5, 2026, 2026, Three-channel video installation with 5-channel audio, 20m TRT, Shot and performed on location in 2025, the artwork follows three psychotherapists as they enter the storage rooms of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Surrounded by shelves of documents, the women at the center of the performance score listen, question, and respond as the archive attempts to describe its fears and desires. Critical questions of selfhood, consciousness, and collective experience form and unravel as the sessions reflect upon the procedures of psychotherapy as they might apply to a subject whose “mind” is composed of an unfathomable mass of undead human writing. This new work is also part of Metrica, an evolving series of performances that stage encounters between public archives, psychoanalysts, and artificial intelligence, initiated by the artist duo in 2023 during their first stay in Vilnius at the Rupert residency programme. Their initial interest in land ownership histories in the region led Benedict and Rueter to two distinct repositories within Lithuanian history: the books of the Lithuanian Metrika—foundational administrative records of the 13th–17th century Duchy of Lithuania, held in 200 codices that have all been removed from Lithuania (the existing volumes are now in Moscow)—which have been digitized in a limited way by historians at Vilnius University; and oral histories of the 1990s post-Soviet Lithuanian administrative processes, developed by the newly independent state to re-privatize and repatriate land, which eventually resulted in a new digital government land register. Out of encounters between these archives, the artists, and artificial intelligence systems, the Metrica series produces a variety of conversational forms that engage what might be understood as the institutional unconscious. For the most recent performances (Metrica No. 5-7, 2025 – ongoing), Benedict and Rueter invite professional psychotherapists to conduct intake sessions with the “psyches” of public archives. Voiced through an AI agent engineered by the artists, the archival psyches draw from historical land records, administrative documents, and literary texts – official records recast as personal memories.
Installation view, Rupert