Rhinoceros Beetle

The rhinoceros beetle wrestling devise is a head-and-body mounted display, that equips human beings with the appendages required to interact with a male Rhinoceros Beetle. The strongest animal in the world, the Rhinoceros Beetle can lift 30 times its weight. So, in addition to scaling us to the beetle’s proportions, the wrestling device evens the playing field, by granting us similar manipulative capacities. It is an architecture of reciprocity, an interface for human and animal interaction on a equal basis.

Wrestling matches are organized in art spaces such as galleries and museums. Formal challenges are issued to literary giants to wrestle the champion beetle and those who accept are asked to simultaneously wrestle with a question relevant to their own work. After the fight, humans are debriefed on video and asked to answer their question and re-live highlights. Their responses will be edited along with fight footage and bets on the outcome will be broadcast on the BronxOOZ website. Humans challenged so-far have included various Hemingway-esque figures such as Joseph ONeil and Hari Kunzru.

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