Richard Sides: Elections

Opening: 22. March 19:00 - 22:00

We’ve been in a standoff with the mice in the kitchen for the better part of this last year. They run under the dishwasher when we open the pocket door, and are small enough that you second guess if you saw them in the first place. You could easily mistake them for some dust if it weren’t for the evidence they leave behind. We use so-called humane traps from Amazon. Green perspex cylinders with an elegant system of springs and hinged doors that hold the mice captive until you release them elsewhere. We usually release them into the yard where they presumably run under the house and back into the kitchen, allowing the passive-aggressive cycle to continue. From our POV: ignore the signs until they are no longer ignorable (shit on the countertop), set the trap, catch and release. The mice undeniably experience this differently. Scale dictates the rules of perspective. The difference in scale affords us an aerial advantage which allows for a certain amount of disinterest. It only becomes an issue when they breach the boundary of elevation, either on the countertop or the stove, and potentially match our eye line, challenging the hierarchy of sight, the order of things, etc. King Kong topping the Empire State Building–making us the biplanes, annoying drones circularly defending an apartment we don’t own.

• Nicole-Antonia Spagnola & Bedros Yeretzian