cockroach - The Art of the Prank

February 7, 2013December 15, 2023

The Golden Age of the Cockroach

Spoiler alert! According to author John Reed, Joey Skaggs’ Metamorphosis: Cockroach Vitamin Pill hoax headlines the Golden Age…

The Golden Age of the Cockroach
by John Reed
Vice.com
February 6, 2013

Every era in art has a new favored subject. The Etruscans looked to Hercules; painters of the Renaissance reenvisioned the Bible; the American Ashcan School rendered sensitive tableaus of poor urban life; and the later half of the 20th century, dominated by the PoMo-ism of downtown NYC, crowned a new king, the cockroach, which was not only an available resource, but a stand-in for the artist””a heroic outcast, thriving in the ruins of civilization.

The oeuvre of the cockroach is best understood as a series of distinct ages that, in turn, comprise a whole. During the Reformation, the cockroach was reconsidered; the Enlightenment percieved the cockroach as potentially “divine”; the Golden Age saw the pinnacle of the discipline; the Silver Age was consumed by celebrity; the Bronze Age refigured the subject as metaphor and victim; the Age of Decline represented the subject in absentia and/or in parts. As far as I can tell, no one has completed, or even attempted, to survey the cockroach’s place in the art world, so consider this seven-part piece that examines an artistic era that scuttled by so quickly, hardly anyone even noticed it. Continue reading “The Golden Age of the Cockroach”

January 16, 2013December 15, 2023

Roaches: A Race Above

From Larry C.: Brings to mind Joey Skaggs’ Metamorphosis: Cockroach Cure hoax.

Communicating with the future: a cockroach DNA archive of the New York Times
by M. Scott Brauer
dvafoto.com
Oct 30, 2009

One of my favorite things to think about is the difficulty of communicating with humans generations from now, or even tens of thousands of years from now. An example: The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management overseeing Yucca Mountain, the proposed Nevada site for disposal of nuclear waste, has been working with artists to develop a warning system that would alert future visitors to the area of the dangers buried in the mountain. From the website, “The monumental challenge is to address how warnings can be coherently conveyed for thousands of years into the future when human society and languages could change radically.” The purpose of the warning sign is “to deter intentional or inadvertent human intrusion or interference at the site and to effectively communicate over the course of the next 10,000 years that the integrity of the site must not be compromised in any way in order to prevent the release of the radiation contained within.” It”™s an interesting visual challenge that must not rely on our own cultural biases. Here”™s one artist”™s response to the challenge, though perhaps it”™s too reliant on the 20th century “Radioactive Danger“ symbol. Continue reading “Roaches: A Race Above”

September 7, 2010December 15, 2023

A Cockroach Cure? Again?

Submitted by Dave Camp, saying “Prescient again”? Dave is referring to a hoax Joey Skaggs did in 1981 called “Metamorphosis“. Skaggs said he was an entomologist who had discovered cures for all of mankind’s common ailments such as colds, flus, acne, anemia and menstrual cramps, by extracting and eating cockroach hormones. Is history repeating itself? Or, was Skaggs really onto something?

Here’s the article:

Cockroach Brains May Be a Source of Antibiotics, Research Says
by Simeon Bennett
Bloomberg
September 6, 2010

Cockroach brains may be a source of new antibiotics capable of killing deadly drug-resistant bacteria, according to research that suggests the germ-spreading pests may be good for something after all.

Insects such as cockroaches have a defense mechanism against bacteria, a “logical” development from living in unhygienic conditions, research from the U.K.”™s University of Nottingham showed. Tissues from the brains and nervous systems of cockroaches and locusts killed more than 90 percent of MRSA and E. coli without damaging human cells, scientists said. Continue reading “A Cockroach Cure? Again?”