Dead Cat Bounce — an oratorio about finance and catastrophe | Book tickets here
A collaboration between Gary Zhexi Zhang and Waste Paper Opera (Klara Kofen and James Oldham) at Eastside Projects Gallery
Dead Cat Bounce explores financial alchemy and the unmaking of reality in the time of catastrophe. Staged within a sculptural installation, the performance takes the form of an oratorio, a mode of baroque performance in which instruments and voice are used to tell a sacred narrative.
The piece unfolds over five vignettes, blurring the lines between capitalism and ritual, finance and nature, belief and manifestation. In China, five hitmen arrive in court to discover that they have each subcontracted another to kill the same real estate developer. In Geneva, thirty virgins are having their teeth checked in order to secure the mounting debts of Louis XVI. In Miami, an insurance broker drafts a contract for apartments already halfway underwater. In Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah is weeping, again.In earthquake-struck Edo, workers pay tribute to the namazu, the catfish deity, as they survey the sunlit ruins of the city.
Musically, the work draws loosely on Jomelli’s Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, interpreted through Waste Paper Opera’s approach bringing together the absurd with the sacred, improvisatory elements and scored material.
Dwelling in the strange light of speculative times, Dead Cat Bounce is a story of unpayable debts, entangled histories and repeated jokes.
Over the course of 2024 Dead Cat bounce will tour to Eastside Projects (Birmingham), Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham) and Arts Catalyst (Sheffield), with the collaboration of Radar Loughborough and Birmingham Opera Company. The work was commissioned by Arts Catalyst (Sheffield) and Medialab Matadero (Madrid) in 2022. It was developed at London Performance Studios and Wysing Arts Centre, and premiered at Somerset House.
Dead Cat Bounce is supported by Arts Council England, Marchus Trust, Hinrichsen Foundation, Birmingham Opera Company.
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