Making My Skin Crawl: Representations and Mediations of the Body in Miya Masaoka's "Ritual, Interspecies Collaboration with Giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches"

"Ritual, Interspecies Collaboration with Giant Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches," devised and performed by composer and performance artist Miya Masaoka, uses "the human body as a canvas," and "confronts the audience with issues of gender, sexuality and ethnicity." In performance Masaoka lies naked on stage, while a number of giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches explore her body and break infra-red sensors that trigger sound samples.