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CNN LIVE AT DAYBREAK
Cockroach Art
Aired June 5, 2003 - 05:57 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: OK, we confess, this next story might gross you out at breakfast time. But, hey, you'll be talking about this one at the office water cooler. Brace yourself for cockroach art, the kind that hangs in a gallery.
As CNN's Jeanne Moos reports, it might make you think twice before reaching for that can of bug spray.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is an exhibit that makes stepping on a roach seem like a mercy killing.
CATHERINE CHALMERS: This is called Electric Chair.
MOOS: Why is an artist rather than an exterminator intent on roach executions?
CHALMERS: Because that's what we do with them, we execute them.
MOOS: So Catherine Chalmers secures roaches to mini electric chairs and ties tiny nooses around their necks, or not so tiny nooses.
CHALMERS: Well, I also wanted to make it beautiful so you'd be kind of seduced into looking at this animal in a way that you possibly wouldn't when you're just chasing it around with your shoe trying to squish it.
MOOS: The lynched roach can be yours for $10,000. The New York gallery where American Roaches is on display lives up to its name -- RARE. Behind the curtain, you can watch what amounts to a roach music video. You can see a simulated gas chamber.
CHALMERS: This is vapor. It's just, I put the roaches in the box and then I put some dry ice vapor in there.
MOOS: Which temporarily knocks them out. But like the true survivors they are, they recover -- a roach resurrection. Chalmers says no roaches are actually harmed.
(on camera): You didn't strangle them to death?
CHALMERS: No, they're already dead. So the executions are actually reenacted.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's disturbing. I'm not quite sure what the message is. To kill roaches? MOOS (voice-over): Nope, that's not it. Although...
CHALMERS: If I was infested with roaches I'd be the first to call an exterminator.
MOOS: The exhibit is meant to be about man's relationship with animals. And if you think it's all a little freaky...
CHALMERS: Why is it a little freaky? I mean we use Raid.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP FROM COMMERCIAL)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Raid!
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MOOS: We spray them, we trap them in roach motels, so it's just a matter of degree, hundreds of degrees, to simulate burning one at the stake.
(on camera): What happened there?
CHALMERS: I blew on him.
MOOS: You blew on him?
(voice-over): To get him to squirm. She then used special effects to overlay flames, finally substituting an already dead roach. Chalmers lives in a loft surrounded by amphibians and insects. Check out the wallpaper. It's actually tiger beetles glued to the wall. Cockroaches may be among the world's most detested creatures, but as one gallery goer wrote, "Never thought I'd feel bad for a cockroach before."
Talk about smoking a roach.
Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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