Xavier Lopez Performance #5C: The Krazy Cat. Katherine Adamenko's Salons. 2001.

At just under an hour, the first, Soft Cyborg "variety show" introduced us to a whole menagerie of characters from a giant "Trix" Rabbit, a big, gray teddy bear, a ghostly clown creature and now we have the Kazy Cat.

My work and writing, including "Toward a Dada Dialectic and the Soft Cyborg," which I had just presented at the 2001 UCDavis Graduate Student Association Interdisciplinary Graduate Symposium, was influenced by the idea of the "Carnivalesque" as described by Mikhail Bakhtin.  "The Krazy Cat" is actually a Mickey Mouse stuffed critter bought from the park, which when turned inside out actually looked more like the cat in the performance.

When I was a child I remember a cartoon dog that used to float up in the air in a state of what has to be described as orgasmic bliss, when he was given a doggie treat.  I loved this doggie and was fascinated by how happy he could become when he received the object of his affection.  Of course, I don’t have to reach so far back to find his contemporaries.  Scooby Doo, for one will do anything to get his “Scooby Snacks.”  He will easily apprehend the same villain that had eluded the Scooby’s for the first half of the cartoon.  He will happily overcome his own fears and attempt all sorts of inexplicable super-heroic feats for the promise of these snacks.  He too becomes orgasmic and ecstatic in the presence of his main addiction. 

Let’s look at perhaps, the most well known of these creations, better known than even Bugs Bunny, I am of course speaking of Mickey Mouse.  A moment ago, I spoke of a Bakhtinian idea that comes from the caves and grottos of the mythic world, images that have come to be called grotesque.  In these ancient drawings and carvings animals and humans were seen to be interacting, often in vulgar and obscene ways, at other times and throughout history we have seen fantastic images of men and women who may have been the offspring of these grotesque carnivals.  Mythology is filled with Minotaurs, hecubi, etc. those creatures, which are a mixture of man and animal.

However, now these creatures have lost their connections to the real animals, they once mimicked, they are fabrications instead of having connections to their real counterparts.  These are creatures like Mickey Mouse, who wear pants and shoes, who live in 50’s houses and who own other animals, speak openly and who’s jobs seemingly are to act as spokes-creatures and film-stars.  But there is something more here, something that gives these creatures, perhaps, an even greater claim to being real than you and I.  No longer happy with Pinocchio’s simple desire to be a boy, to be human, to enter our world and be one of us.  These Soft-Cyborgs are claiming immortality.