‘Then I’ll Take Your Cat’ is a continuation of Animal Performance. In both pieces, I’m interested in how we perceive animals’ reactions to human behavior. It is primarily about the human gaze since the animals are subjected to something that some people believe questions their dignity. I use sexuality when investigating this since it’s a primary drive in mammals. I staged a kiss between a cat and a person and also a cat observing a person masturbating. The reactions were interesting.

Some people became upset and thought I took advantage of the animals. But I could neither force nor prevent the cat. It chooses itself what it wants to watch and lick. What the cat is exposed to is in the eye of the spectator. Who decides what’s okay or and what isn’t? Can you make that decision for somebody else? In the eyes of the animals, it could mean something else.

In these performances, the animals are substitutes for humans in sexually charged situations. That is provoking. The animal becomes equal to human beings. We’re not used to that. Suddenly you can’t just dismiss an animal as an ”animal”, which we have to do in order to continue our crimes against animals. Eat them, cage them, use them.