When the Cat Sleeps the Mice Dance
Jason Mendiola, Sohyun Yoon, Sarah Boo, Mary Fisher, Ariane Labbe, Caro Simon
Curated by Emerald 邹佑
June 5 - July 5, 2026
I’m looking all the time, and I’m never quite seeing it. But the sounds all sound the same to me up here. I’m listening for a birdcall that is new to me and I’m hearing a transformer buzz. These are the hallmarks of an empty space, filled and brimming. The crisp blue sky of the morning before the clouds roll in. A park that was full of ice melted into mud. I opened the hood just to close it again. Pushed the jam jar farther back into the fridge. A cat crossed in front of me without stopping. Around me lives a mutable set of odds. Dealing in percentages, and finding ways around a solution without settling in. So I sat down on a bench and found a book tucked between the slats, full to the margins of the same word over and over again. That irrepressible hiss of all the points around me overlapping, or spread too thin for any line to be approximating a useful curve. I’ve been looking up to find the sky scratched across with cables carrying information and electrons and the dust we all shed all of the time, and the air is filled with an insectile hum. A buzz that cannot be placed within the sometimes-cicada-filled trees or the lines bisecting them. Stepping over grease stains in the pavement that resemble a tree until I stop and look closer and see that they look just like grease stains in the pavement. The hollowing out of an outside to be walked past and seen. Salt tracked into the first few steps of the house, and a small puddle under the stained shoes. I’ve heard somewhere that ice can technically be defined as a rock, because of the crystalline structure, because melting temperature is an arbitrary line when it comes to definitions, because I can’t find any stones to slip into my pocket when the snow drifts bury them all out here.
I’ve been trying to dance through an architecture that is not built for dancing. An ambience of almost serenity punctuated by the garbage truck tossing bins back. Looking for the imaginary plane, and finding my eyes shift down to a shadow undulating through a casement window, boxes clogged with dust. So there is work to be done in the workshops below. Through the floors I can feel resonances that aren’t supposed to be there. A mouse scurrying across shifting plaster. The crackle of a stairwell creaking differently on each tread. A new fundamental frequency envelops me. The precious must emanating. Maybe the puddle on the floor mingling with the salt I tracked in is a stone that escaped me. I’ve been thinking about time as a measurement of depth, and how deep one has to go to get back somewhere you once stood. I once stood at the bottom of the stairwell, on the last step, before flicking the switch and dashing up, two at a time, before the hands in the dark could grab me. I once sat on the musty carpet floor, cat curling up beside me, and spread out the photos so I could settle into what faces familiar to me had in common with these ghosts in the grids. I woke up in a corner and hadn’t the slightest idea how I got there, only that the blanket from my bed was draped over my shoulders and the rough and heavy feeling of sleep-clogged eyes kept the basement rough and hazy in the pre-dawn limbo and I trudged back up the bed recently departed.
I once watched diodes and speaker wire and electric motors with batteries corroded and missing tumble out of Sarah’s pockets and knew there was new and uneasy life just around the corner. I once saw Ariane standing still and small at the bottom of the construction pit, soaking in the percussing chorus of drops falling from the extended ends of pipework that terminated in the negative space overhead. I once found Jason at the well with rope in hand, and based on the tension in the line, the strain on his hands, the echoes cascading up and out of the darkened shaft, I couldn’t say whether the bucket was carrying any water. I once heard Mary whisper a question into a storm drain and lean in close for the answer. I once walked down the power lines, pushing past the late season overgrown undergrowth and remembered Caro’s telling me about what it feels like to be in between the pylons, so I stood still and felt what it felt like, there, in between. I once listened to Sohyun talk about the cursory rapture of dappled light wrapping around the corner of a concrete wall, or perhaps the memory of something that wasn’t ever really there.
It’s hard to see down here, but I reach out all the same to expose a familiar shape. The coolness, the damp, the soft thud of a wet sock slipping out of the basket and onto the concrete floor. Not feeling anything but settling into geometries new to me. I thought I heard a million small feet scuttling across a rough floor. Or was I starting to see a distant dimness from around a corner? Just a few photons careening across the space to my eyes, lingering in the stale air. And a trickle of water, the impression of the sound of a trickle of water, shimmered around the room. And, in listening to that trickle of water flow through the overhead pipes, I become familiar with hidden infrastructure of habit that brings me closer to something I can’t quite say. The dust mote movement reanimating the detritus past which they drift. Maybe there is a version of God in these groaning joists overhead. Maybe the moisture seeping through the cracks is a sign that life is where we leave it to fester. And maybe where I’ve left it all in these boxes and heaps is a reminder, a map, an incomplete data set and here I am plotting points and scattering the graph so any line can become the one of best fit. One as good as the next. These are the hallmarks of a crowded space. I think about absolutes sometimes, where walls are laid out. But squat down by the line and a hard edge can become hazy. The crags and cracks. An infinite coastline, or the flux of a population over time. A cloud slowly turning over, too slow for the eye to register. But I can see the wires quiver down here. The mildew sweetens the still air. A rounded sense of the world abounds in the scraps of the subterrain. And I think I can hear dancing in the walls.
I’ve been trying to dance through an architecture that is not built for dancing. An ambience of almost serenity punctuated by the garbage truck tossing bins back. Looking for the imaginary plane, and finding my eyes shift down to a shadow undulating through a casement window, boxes clogged with dust. So there is work to be done in the workshops below. Through the floors I can feel resonances that aren’t supposed to be there. A mouse scurrying across shifting plaster. The crackle of a stairwell creaking differently on each tread. A new fundamental frequency envelops me. The precious must emanating. Maybe the puddle on the floor mingling with the salt I tracked in is a stone that escaped me. I’ve been thinking about time as a measurement of depth, and how deep one has to go to get back somewhere you once stood. I once stood at the bottom of the stairwell, on the last step, before flicking the switch and dashing up, two at a time, before the hands in the dark could grab me. I once sat on the musty carpet floor, cat curling up beside me, and spread out the photos so I could settle into what faces familiar to me had in common with these ghosts in the grids. I woke up in a corner and hadn’t the slightest idea how I got there, only that the blanket from my bed was draped over my shoulders and the rough and heavy feeling of sleep-clogged eyes kept the basement rough and hazy in the pre-dawn limbo and I trudged back up the bed recently departed.
I once watched diodes and speaker wire and electric motors with batteries corroded and missing tumble out of Sarah’s pockets and knew there was new and uneasy life just around the corner. I once saw Ariane standing still and small at the bottom of the construction pit, soaking in the percussing chorus of drops falling from the extended ends of pipework that terminated in the negative space overhead. I once found Jason at the well with rope in hand, and based on the tension in the line, the strain on his hands, the echoes cascading up and out of the darkened shaft, I couldn’t say whether the bucket was carrying any water. I once heard Mary whisper a question into a storm drain and lean in close for the answer. I once walked down the power lines, pushing past the late season overgrown undergrowth and remembered Caro’s telling me about what it feels like to be in between the pylons, so I stood still and felt what it felt like, there, in between. I once listened to Sohyun talk about the cursory rapture of dappled light wrapping around the corner of a concrete wall, or perhaps the memory of something that wasn’t ever really there.
It’s hard to see down here, but I reach out all the same to expose a familiar shape. The coolness, the damp, the soft thud of a wet sock slipping out of the basket and onto the concrete floor. Not feeling anything but settling into geometries new to me. I thought I heard a million small feet scuttling across a rough floor. Or was I starting to see a distant dimness from around a corner? Just a few photons careening across the space to my eyes, lingering in the stale air. And a trickle of water, the impression of the sound of a trickle of water, shimmered around the room. And, in listening to that trickle of water flow through the overhead pipes, I become familiar with hidden infrastructure of habit that brings me closer to something I can’t quite say. The dust mote movement reanimating the detritus past which they drift. Maybe there is a version of God in these groaning joists overhead. Maybe the moisture seeping through the cracks is a sign that life is where we leave it to fester. And maybe where I’ve left it all in these boxes and heaps is a reminder, a map, an incomplete data set and here I am plotting points and scattering the graph so any line can become the one of best fit. One as good as the next. These are the hallmarks of a crowded space. I think about absolutes sometimes, where walls are laid out. But squat down by the line and a hard edge can become hazy. The crags and cracks. An infinite coastline, or the flux of a population over time. A cloud slowly turning over, too slow for the eye to register. But I can see the wires quiver down here. The mildew sweetens the still air. A rounded sense of the world abounds in the scraps of the subterrain. And I think I can hear dancing in the walls.
- Jasper Winch
