Amos’ World is a fictional television show, set in a socially progressive housing estate. Across three episodes, viewers are introduced to an architect named Amos – played by a puppet – and the tenants of the individual-communal complex he has built. As they become increasingly aware of the failures and tensions within the infrastructure they inhabit, Amos grapples with his plummeting power.

Alone Together shows the third episode of this work which is set immediately after ‘The Turn’, a cataclysmic event at the end of the second episode that fragments the characters’ and the format of the series itself. Filmed in front of a live studio audience, Episode Three features film sets representing the original locations, creating a distance from Amos’ constructed reality. The tenants contend with its remains: pieces of a narrative that always had missing parts, multiple angles, and poorly joined scaffolds. In response to this breakdown, they begin the complex task of negotiating a solution and their own changing realities.

The episode is viewed from Erratics (I-VIII), eight sculptural cubes where visitors can sit, one at a time but together, suggesting the simultaneous presence of both a collective and individual vision. The Erratics are a further articulation of fragments in constant motion, as an ink resembling the Mother bacteria from Episode Two curls and undulates within sections of clear resin, housed in concrete that appears softened by time, migration, and use.

Taken together, all the works that make up the Amos’ World trilogy become an allegory about the disconnect between how networked infrastructure is presented and the many ways in which it is lived.. Displayed on its own, Episode Three focuses on two of the most uncertain themes in the series: the relinquishing of power and how it can be redistributed, even in the absence of consensus within an unfixed reality.

Courtesy the artist and Galerie Emanuel Layr
Amos’ World: Episode Three, 2018 - HD video installation, 25’
Erratics I-VIII, 2018, dimensions variable; concrete, resin, tattoo ink, polymer wax

AMOS, The Architect who has designed the building
THE WEATHER, The weather, as represented by a bodiless voice
THE TENANTS:
THE SECRETARY, a woman who has lost control over her own narrative and creates an idea of herself.
THE NARGIS, three animated flowers who leave the building to join The Rainbow Connection, in search of something better.
GLORIA, an actress, who grows increasingly frustrated by the circulation of her images outside of the building. She awaits the return of her lover, who left the building a long time ago.
HER/THE MOTHER, Gloria’s mother an animated swallow, who is killed at the end of the first episode by the building’s solar panel system. She returns in the second episode as a bacterial colony that takes her daughter’s body as a host. Their collision with the Weather, who has been weaponised by Amos, causes The Turn.
THE TIME TRAVELLER, a woman who used to live in the building, and tries to reach her lover (Gloria) who still inhabits it.
THE MANAGER of the building, who has been injured by a flaw in the building’s design and resolves to be an active part of the change.

IMAGE CREDIT: AMOS' WORLD/ EPISODE THREE, STILL FROM VIDEO, 2018, COURTESY CÉCILE B. EVANS AND GALERIE EMANUEL LAYR

Cécile B. Evans
°1983, Cleveland, USA

Cécile B. Evans is an American-Belgian artist living and working in London. In her practice, she examines the value of emotion and its rebellion as it comes into contact with ideological, physical, and technological structures. Her films, sculptures and installations articulate moments of dissonance, as instruments of capitalist progress and technological advancement come into contact with variable and uncontrollable human behaviors. Through narrative propositions, Evans explores this interface between humanity, the realities it produces, and its organizing infrastructures. Cécile B. Evans’ work is part of major public collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York (US), Whitney Museum of American Art (US), De Hallen (NL), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (DK), and FRAC Auvergne (FR). Her work has been included in major group exhibitions and biennials world-wide. 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), Kunsthalle Aarhus (DK), M Museum Leuven (BE), De Hallen Haarlem (NL), and Serpentine Galleries (UK). Cécile B. Evans was awarded the Schering Stiftung (2016), illy Present Future Prize (2016), the Andaz Art Award, (2015), Palais de Tokyo’s Push Your Art Prize (2013) and the Frieze Award (formerly Emdash, 2012). She is represented by Galerie Emanuel Layr.