Dead Cat Bounce

Dead Cat Bounce is an exhibition about an experimental opera by Gary Zhexi Zhang and Waste Paper Opera that imagines parallel realities of environmental and financial catastrophes across time and space.

Dwelling in the strange light of speculative times, Dead Cat Bounce is a story of unpayable debts, entangled histories and repeated jokes.

The work takes the form of an oratorio, a mode of baroque performance in which instruments and voice are used to tell a sacred narrative, and it unfolds over five interwoven vignettes of pre-emptive catastrophe.

Through these narratives, Dead Cat Bounce explores the links between capitalism and ritual, finance and nature, belief and manifestation.

At the core of the exhibition is a multi-channel sound installation, featuring a one-hour piece that brings together recordings from previous iterations of Dead Cat Bounce’s live performance at Somerset House (2022) and Nottingham Contemporary (2024).

Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the sounds and voices of the oratorio, and to step into an expanded performance stage, populated by structures and sculptures that bring to life the stories of Dead Cat Bounce’s main characters.