“The reel is threaded, the lights are switched off, Grigori’s attention is directed to the screen, where an image already walks,” thus begins the unorthodox relationship of Katje and Grigori (113). Katje is introduced to Grigori, a mentally unstable octopus owned by the White Visitation and who is subject to Pavlovian conditioning, through a video of Katje taken covertly in Prentice Pirate’s maisonette.
The picture I created is comprised of three separate images. The first two images, of “Katje” and “Grigori,” are photographs I took in the Rino district of Denver and are murals painted in the alleys and walls between Walnut and Larimer. The third image, the background of the waves crashing on a beach while a man’s loose papers litter the beach, is from painter Joel Rea. I chose to use photography, and a Photoshop program, to illustrate this relationship in part due to my fascination of Grigori and my interest in the mural that portrays Grigori. I visit Rino fairly regularly to take photos, though it was not until after I had read the scene of Grigori’s attack on Katje that I discovered this mural hidden away in an alley. The image in its entirety depicts an androgynous figure with the octopus on its head wearing headphones and sweeping away entire forests. It appears as though the octopus, with its dismembered tentacles and wild eye, is “not in good mental health” and the figure below him stares at the destruction with unseeing eyes and headphones feeding him information (187). There is also an aspect of appropriation to my image, which is a key tenet of postmodern art. The images I used are not mine, though I have repurposed them to create something new and original.
In this image, I wanted to capture Grigori’s fascination with Katje as well as the motives behind his attack. It is clear that Grigori was conditioned to have a response to Katje through the Pavlovian conditioning forced upon him by the White Visitation. The head phones that are worn by the octopus and the figure symbolize the forcing of this information while the small sign, visible at the end of one of his tentacles, reads “NOTICE: This area is under 24 hour video surveillance,” symbolizing the video that was the tool for his conditioning. The man in the left of the photo, holding a paper up to read while discarded paper litter the beach, symbolizes the scientists at the White Visitation orchestrating Grigori’s confused attack.
Grigori is a fascinating character because of his species and his subjectivity to the Pavlovian conditioning that the White Visitation is so fond of. Like Slothrop, Grigori is subjected to these experiments without his consent and the product of these experiments is a certain behavior that he has little to no control over: “Now, cocking a malignant eye at the girl, it reaches out, wraps one long sucker-studded tentacle around her neck as everyone watches, another around her waist and begins to drag her, struggling, back under the sea” (186). So ends, at least for now, the relationship between Katje and Grigori.
