Dr. Strange Love II: How I Stop Thinking & Fall in Love with A Cat

“For one cannot enter into a felt rapport with another entity if one assumes that that other is entirely inanimate.” Becoming Animal, David Abram

It sets off various embodied journeys where I put myself as figures under different domesticated settings, where both human and non-human animals are subjected to. In my attempt to “de-territorialize”, and failed attempts of becoming-an-animal, I found my body entangled in our story and history of domestication, where wilderness is demeaned, tamed, conquered, controlled for mass production or distorted for exoticism. In attempts to meet the inexhaustible other, I found myself stifled in a manmade sterile human cage.

In this work I embody and visualise the realm where the chasm between human and non-human bodies is as yet defined — once upon a time, at the beginning of our story of domestication. How does a strange love unfold the conditions for empathetic sensibility, between and among species? Through my grotesque endeavour to meet my cat, I wish to open up windows for what responsibility can mean in a world of differences.

“How to flourish together in difference without the telos of a final peace”

When Species Meet, Donna Haraway

Reflection in time of confinement — "getting how the world is to someone else", by a domesticated human accompanied by a domesticated cat.