The author asks (and answers) various questions regarding a videotape of the performance – such as :
• “What affect is achieved through Masaoka’s absence of clothing?”
• “Does the sound of the cockroaches allow Masaoka to incorporate ‘nature’ and ‘animal’ into the sonic portrait she creates?”
• “Can the music represent the body?”
And what does the performance say of the dyadic concepts such as body/technology, subject/object, human/machine and presence/absence?
Hisssssssssssing. Ksssttcchhhssssssk.
“Camera zooms in and out – slowly. There are bursts of hissing, then silence, then hissing, then silence. Will there be more hissing? A cockroach falls off a leg, and the screen goes blank.”
The paper can be read in full here > ‘Making My Skin Crawl: Representations and Mediations of the Body in Miya Masaoka’s Ritual, Interspecies Collaboration with Giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches.’
More photos of a performance of Ritual here :
