Oleg Kulig I Bite America and
America Bites Me
1997
I'm standing looking into your cage,
listening to the baffled and banal comments
of onlookers. You want me to believe that
you are a dog. You want me to believe that
you believe you are a dog. But I know
better. And so do you. The materials
available at the front desk suggest that
this performance is about animal rights.
But that is not you. Not some animal rights
activist who steps over homeless people
sprawled across his stoop on the way to
work. So, it's not about animal rights.
Maybe it's about our animal natures. Not a
metaphor for being treated as a dog. Women
are treated as dogs by culture. Minorities
too. But not white men. Surely, not even in
Russia. Then again, maybe in another
country a post-cold-war Russian male is a
dog. Not to the Chase Manhattan bank in
Soho, where the ATM politely asks if it is
to proceed in English or Russian. Remember
Ben Blue riding his horse Beatrice through
the landscape of '60s America screaming,
"The Russians are coming, the Russians are
coming!" But the Russians didn't come until
the cold war was over. You didn't come
until the cold war was over. You approach
the glass window and spy my book. I hold it
up to the glass for you to see and you
smile. And suddenly I'm smitten. In her
first novel Anne Michaels says, "What is
love at first sight but the response of a
soul crying out with sudden regret because
it realizes it has never before been
recognized?" I notice that a young girl has
put on a pair of heavy blue overalls and a
large protective mitt. She enters your
cage. She looks very sweet and very
innocent. I assume, at first, that she is
part of the gallery staff. She beckons you
and you come to her. She is overdressed and
you are naked. No dog sweaters for you. She
is crouching down, offering her hand. You
get very close and sniff her neck, her
face. Then you move around her. You are
between her and the wall. I wonder -- are
you licking her face? Is your tongue in her
ear? Suddenly her neck bobs and she
giggles. In that moment before her chin hit
her chest.... I discover that anyone can
enter your cage. In the time since your
exhibition opened approximately ten people
have chosen to do so. Foolishly, I forget
to ask if they were all women although I am
sure that they were. I am neither as young
nor as innocent as the previous visitor. I
entertain the curious conceit that you are
lonely and bored. This is probably
ridiculous, with all this attention you are
fully entertained. I won't know what to do
with myself when I get in there. So I bring
my book. I'm going to sit and read to a
dog, or at least a man who wants me to
treat him as though I believe that he is a
dog. I should be used to this by now. My
daughter is a different animal every half
hour and if I am unconvinced her wrath is
boundless. I couldn't have been reading
something like Russia's Lost Literature of
the Absurd. Those peculiar little stories
by Danil Kharms and Alexander Vvenensky. Or
Tatyana Tolstaya's fabulous review of David
Remick's Resurrection: The Struggle for a
New Russia. I read that last week -- on the
subway. And by the way, I love Gorby too.
No, it was Claudia Koonz' Mothers in the
Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi
Politics. Perhaps a critical look at German
culture is O.K. The trouble with Joseph
Beuys was that his work always seemed to me
to be continuos with and not a break from
National Socialist culture. A very
unpopular opinion. I didn't want him as my
leader. The gallery staff insist that you
don't speak a word of English so it
shouldn't matter what I read. Of course, I
don't believe them. So I enter your cage in
the mandatory padded overalls and the
oversize mitt. I bravely dispense with the
mitt. You come up and take it away. A lot
of angry barking. I start by crouching down
against the wall by the door. The padded
clothes chafe my neck. I finally manage to
sit down cross-legged. I have left my
glasses outside of the cage because I can't
read with them on. When you are far away
you are in soft focus. When you come close
I can see you clearly. I mutter the four
words that I know in Russian: good
afternoon, thank you, no and bird. You were
a bird once. I start reading. Not at the
beginning, but where I last left off. You
go and lay down. There is a potty near the
foot of your bed. I find myself wondering
if you defecate while the audience is
watching or if you wait until everyone has
left the gallery. Americans always laugh at
shit jokes. Next, I find myself in a
conversation with a young girl standing
outside of your cage who has been to the
gallery previously and who has returned
with a small blue ball. She has tested it
by putting it into her own mouth to make
sure it is not too small. When she tosses
it to you she doesn't want you to swallow
it by mistake. When I entered your cage at
5 p.m. I actually thought that I would be
able to sit with you for the hour that
remained until the gallery closed. Only ten
visitors in two weeks and now three in less
than one hour. I have been reading to you
intermittently. You seem to enjoy it for a
time. One of the staff at the cage door
tells me that someone else wishes to come
in. The girl with the blue ball. Evidently,
only one visitor is allowed at a time. Two
women sitting in your cage might make you
look too domesticated. I have to leave. As
if to reinforce this message you approach
barking loudly. You look threatening. The
closer you get, the less I want to leave. I
don't want you to believe for one minute
that I am afraid of you. When I was very
young I worked in a psychiatric hospital
with people who were truly mad. I'm not so
easy to intimidate. You come very close.
Your face is covered with sweat. Or perhaps
it is just water lapped up from your bowl.
Now your face is a few inches from mine and
you are snarling. A dog that close -- you'd
feel it's hot breath on your face. If you
were my sister's Doberman acting like this
-- I would be afraid. I don't keep pets
myself. But I would keep you. And that,
it seems to me, is conclusive proof, my
dear sweet Oleg, that you are not an
animal, you are not man's best friend, you
are -- quite simply -- a man. An
intellectual. Americans are notoriously
anti-intellectual. I don't share their
antipathy. I know just how serious you are
and so I can love you all the more. But I
don't know how to tell you -- I'm not much
good at barking. I've decided, therefore,
that I am going to allow this letter to be
published. I wonder, will it be "hailed" by
you? Or will it float around in cyberspace
forever missing it's mark. It's a dog's
life. Truly.
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