CURA.

How do new technologies influence the way humans feel and act? In her installations, videos, online platforms and performances, Cécile B. Evans explores the impact of technology on our behaviour. The mutual dependency between people and machines are the crux of Sprung a Leak, an automated performance Evans has created for her first solo exhibition in Belgium. Conversations between moving robots in the space and a chorus of performers on the television screens evolve as they react to information leaking from a system that surrounds them. The installation exposes vulnerabilities in an ever-changing collaboration between humans and machines.

In the context of contemporary society, the title Sprung a Leak reminds us not only of data leaks, such as Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information in 2013, but also the flow of emotionally charged events and information that have surged through our day-to-day life in recent years. In the world that Evans has constructed, these leaks begin to expose the uncontrollable and perhaps unreliable nature of the system that creates this reality.

The title is a reference to Two Noble Kinsmen, a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1634. In the play, the tragic character of the Jailer’s Daughter literally cries “A leak is sprung, a sound one”, using her possible hallucination
of a ship hitting rocks to describe the moment at which she fails to control her emotions. Here the ship also represents the failure of technology to natural elements - Sprung a Leak’s conflict is pushed forward by this tension between the common breakdowns of humans and technology.