This catalogue documents three
video works by the Belgian-American artist Cécile B. Evans, in which she explores the impact of digital technology on human condition.
With (1770–25k) Cécile B. Evans presents materials from three recent video works included in her solo exhibition “Timeline for a Copy without Origins”: Agnes (The End Is Near), Hyperlinks or It Didn't Happen, and What the Heart Wants. The amalgamations of text and image appear in the form of audiovisual transcripts, much of the material scavenged verbatim from popular culture and the user-generated web content of platforms like YouTube, Craigslist, and Reddit. Evans explores the themes of digital reproduction and transposition through existential discussions between characters such as AGNES, a bot commissioned for the Serpentine Galleries website, and PHIL, a bad copy of a very famous actor. This publication was supported by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung under its “Catalogues for Young Artists” prize.
Published following the exhibition “Timeline for a Copy without Origins” at Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany, from January 30 to April 10, 2016.
In her work, Cécile B. Evans (born 1983, lives and works in Berlin and London) investigates the function of emotions in our networked society and the influence of
digital technologies on human condition. Her mixed-media installations reflect the interconnection of digital and analogue ways of life as well as their interaction. Among her range of topics, the autonomy of digital images and data circulation in the internet, the relationship of user generated content and automated recording processes (bots), as well as the newest developments and technologies in the processes of artificial intelligence and the moving image are currently her recurring themes. Based on extensive research and supported by collaboratively developed programmes and visual simulations, she creates rendered agents and narrative spaces, which are, however, always transferred into a physical experience in the exhibition and thus presume concrete interactions between humans and machines.
