Cécile B. Evans (BE), in collaboration with biologist-architect Rachel Armstrong

The polymorphous installation is an exploration of the parameters of a dead future, that is, a future defined by the failures of the past. Prevailing units of measurement and capital, here the 13sqm defined as the smallest official living space in London or the 999 years listed on the longest leasehold agreements in the UK, often fail to align with the reality of lived experiences. Armstrong and Evans suggest it's the 'uncooperative matter'-- entities such as emotions or microbes--that could lead to fluid, unfixed perceptions of multiple realities: something more aligned with the uncertainty that dominates human experience. The structure acts as a living and dying organism, prioritizing the material realities of change over its coordinates. The figure of an animated blue swallow appears, rising and falling, a holographic illusion projected onto a curtain of fog. The atomized particles of the curtain are partially collected by dehumidifiers and recycled back into the machine. A compartment contains an ever-evolving colony of microbes, which inhabit a microbial fuel cell (MFC) bioreactor brick installation, generating energy to power an electronic display. Within the display, a text shaped by conversations around the project and the power generated by recalcitrance and change quietly unfolds as the structure evolves to propose mutability as a strategy for survival.

Links: http://cecilebevans.com

Bioengineering team:
Ioannis Ieropolous (lead), Jiseon You, Arjuna Mendis, Tom Hall, Patrick Brinson / University of the West of England; Simone Ferracina / University of Edinburgh; Rolf Hughes, Pierangelo Scravaglieri / Newcastle University

MFC bioreactor brick installation design: Pierangelo Scravaglieri, under the guidance of Ioannis Ieropolous
Structure designer: Dominik Arni
Structure fabricator: Weber Industries
Contributing writer: Amal Khalaf
Animator: Tom Kemp
Composer: Mati Gavriel
Research and production assistance: Anna Clifford

Commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery for the exhibition Is This Tomorrow?

With support from: Personal Improvement Ltd., Living Architecture (EU Grant Agreement no. 686585) at Newcastle University, with additional support fromAndrew Hesketh, Audioviz (UK FogScreen), and the Bristol BioEnergy Centre at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory.

Cécile B. Evans (BE/US) is a Belgian-American artist based in London. Her work examines the value of emotion and its rebellion as it comes into contact with ideological, physical, and technological structures. Recent solo exhibitions include Frac Lorraine (FR), Museum Abteiberg (DE), Tramway (UK), Chateau Shatto (US), Museo Madre (IT), mumok Vienna (AT), Castello di Rivoli (IT), Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna (AT), Tate Liverpool (UK).
Rachel Armstrong (GB) is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University, a Rising Waters II Fellow (Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, 2016), TWOTY futurist (2015), Fellow of the British Interplanetary Society, and a 2010 Senior TED Fellow. She is Director and founder of the Experimental Architecture Group (EAG), whose work has been widely published and internationally exhibited and performed, for example at Venice Art and Architecture Biennales, Tallinn Architecture Biennale, and Trondheim Art Biennale.