Desperate Times displays the functioning of a series of domestic traps, miniature reproductions of cartoon-like machines, taken from a number of different sources: trapping manuals, survivalist journals, cartoons – like Tom and Jerry, Wile E Coyote and Road Runner – and pieces of architecture. The traps are shown in their mere mechanics: set in motion by an invisible presence, they endlessly repeat their movements without making any victim, betraying their premise. What is left is a catalog of violent and yet clumsy actions, at once abstract and familiar, comedic and tragic.