Associação Cultural Videobrasil

ARTIST’S STATEMENT COCO FUSCO

I am drawn to performative modes of art making, from body art to staged drama, to live street actions, to public speaking because of my interest in working through the complex psycho-social dynamics of lived encounters among people of different cultures in the real world. Even when I am working in video, I am very conscious of the actual encounter with the television monitor or the screen and of the social context of that media experience. Hence, for example, my video installation "Dolores from 10 to 10" is designed as a simulated closed circuit television system so that audiences viewing this simulated surveillance “movie” confront not only the implications of the image but of the viewing scenario.

For more than fifteen years, I have explored the ways that intercultural dynamics affect the construction of the self and ideas about cultural otherness. I have made work that focuses on tourism as a central channel of intercultural exchange between North and South America; I have created pieces that address the ways that the very Western notion of the “primitive” that emerged in Enlightenment thought informs not only

anthropology but also Euro-American modernism and postmodernism and contemporary cyberculture. Much of my artwork and writing has

been about the politics of Cuban cultural identity and the ways of and reasons for envisioning the experiences of migration and diaspora. More

recently, I have been concerned with the effects of globalization on notions of cultural identity and cultural “belonging.”

Since the mid-1990s I have been exploring the implications of what many sociologists have characterized as “the feminization of labor” in the

global economy. By this I mean that I have tried to create works that address how stereotypes about the so-called passivity and docility of

Latin women are deployed to justify their exploitation as cheap labor in export processing zones and in the service industry, particularly in the

US-Mexico border zone. My recent multimedia performance The Incredible Disappearing Woman looked at how the political and economic

abjection in “the Global South” can become a form of entertainment in a contemporary media culture that capitalizes on the thrill of violence. My

latest video, "a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert", extends my on-going examination of racial imagery. I combine fictional and documentary source materials to reflect on the use of electronic surveillance against Angela Davis from 1969 to 1972 as part of covert FBI operations that bear a striking resemblance to the current Patriot Act-inspired efforts of American law enforcement to criminalize dissent.

My new work explores contemporary military scenarios as intercultural encounters. I am focusing in particular on prisons and detention centers run by the US military as the last “theatres of combat” in the age of info-war. I have been inspired to consider this arena because of ongoing discussions in the media worldwide about the US government’s attempts to rewrite the international rules regarding torture and in doing so to redefine the parameters of human rights. The writings of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben on the conditions of Homo Sacer (sacred man) have helped me to understand the implications of what for me are profoundly disturbing forms of dehumanization.

Reviewing ancient Greek philosophical concepts of the meaning of life, he notes that political life was considered to be a separate category from the

simple fact of living, which he terms “bare life.” For Agamben, “In Western politics, bare life has the peculiar privilege of being that whose exclusion

founds the city of men.”1 He goes on to explain that the modern political state politics turns into biopolitics, the management of physical existence

through technologies that discipline bodies and even destroy them en masse.

The life of homo sacer (sacred man), who may be killed and yet not sacrificed, and whose essential function in modern politics we intend to assert. An obscure figure of archaic Roman law, in which human life is included in the juridical order (ordinamento) solely in the form of its exclusion (that is, of its capacity to be killed), has thus offered the key by which not only the sacred texts of sovereignty but also the very codes of political power will unveil their mysteries.(2)

The stories that have emerged about torture occurring in these prisons usually focus on extreme physical abuse and cultural-specific forms of degradation. However, there are also a host of routine humiliating activities that US soldiers force prisoners to engage in order to break them. Some of these activities are staged for cameras, others function strictly as live performances within the prison that dramatize the prisoner’s subservience to be witnessed by fellow prisoners and military authorities. In these grotesque spectacles, the demands of the sovereign power are reconfigured as the prisoners’ expressions of desire and contentment. In that sense, they can be understood as contemporary versions of the scenes of subjection that literary critic Saidiya Hartman has analyzed so effectively in relation to slavery in America. Hartman describes how enslaved blacks were compelled to sing and dance and feign delight en route to the auction block. She notes how these performances combined “coerced festivity of the slave trade” with “instrumental recreations of plantation management.” … “exemplify the us of the body as an instrument against the self.”(3)

In bringing out into the open the coerced performances that American authorities have made a concerted attempt to suppress, I hope to provoke reflection not only about the implications of this “state of exception” as part of contemporary political life, but also about the global public’s role as witness.

(1) Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 5.

(2) Ibid, p. 8.

(3) Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

15th Videobrasil website:

"Norte : Sur_ A Performance Radio-Script" - by Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña Norte : Sur A Performance Radio-Script (The program was commissioned by the Festival 2000 of San Francisco in 1990 and was produced by Toucan Productions. It aired on National Public Radio in 1990.) female voice_ This is Norte: Sur. This is about America. America, not only the U.S., but America. [music: Los Electrodomésticos sing: Les deseo de lo más profundo de mi corazón. A todos ustedes y los suyos...] male voice_ And now, queridos radioescuchas, direct from Santiago de Chile, Los Electrodomésticos. We dedicate this song to the newly deposed president, General Augusto Pinochet. The conductor of this machine, one of many conductors... [music: Los Electrodomésticos sing: Así mismo como también, para respetarle Señor conductor de esta máquina, que también cumple un papel importante en nuestra cuidad...] [latin musak jingle] american radio announcer_ Greetings, friends, this is Meredith James, hostess of NPR's weekly series, Buscando América. Today we are going to listen to some daring thoughts about America's changing cultural identity. We have two people in our Miami studio who believe that the United States can no longer be conceived of as separate from Latin America and the Caribbean. Guillermo Gómez-Peña [interrupting]_ In fact, American identity is a 500-year-old wound that has never healed. Coco Fusco_ The North and the South aren't bipolar entities anymore. The First and Third worlds, English and Spanish - they are totally intertwined. Meredith James_ Wait. I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. We haven't even introduced you yet. As you can tell, listeners, our guests have quite a bit to say about the issue. They are Gwermo Comes-Pinis from Mexico - GG-P_ Guillermo Gómez-Peña, por favor. I see myself as a citizen from San Diejuna, really. MJ [exasperated]_ All right then. And we have Coucou Fusco, a Cuban living in New York. [bizarre flute music] CF_ My name is Coco Fusco, and actually, I was born in the U.S. and am genetically composed of Yoruba, Taino, Catalan, Sephardic, and Neopolitan blood. In 1990, that makes me Hispanic. If this were the '50s, I might be considered black. MJ_ How romantic! [cheesy drumroll] GG-P_ Would you believe that one of my grandmothers was part German and part British? During the '40s, she wrote bilingual poetry in Mexico City, but no one was into that sort of thing back then. My other grandparents had a mixture of Spanish and Indian blood. MJ_ Fascinating, but I'm afraid we have to go back to our subject. Coco, how do you think that your personal story makes you part of America? male voice with thick spanish accent_ Pregunta de la semana - how much Spanish can your cultivated ears take? [music: Fernando Albuerne sings: Siento la nostalgia de volverte a ver, más el destino manda y no puede ser. Habana, mi tierra querida...] female voice_ Ay, vivir en la música ajena, padecer de nostalgia importada, importar la nostalgia propia, triste condición de nuestras tierras. [music: romantic guitar music] CF_ Mi tio abuelo Flaviano escucha a su Frank Sinatra por la Radio Martí. GG-P_ Mi padre escuchaba ferviente a Nat King Cole en la XEW, México, D.F. CF_ Me acuerdo de mi abuela, bailando en la cocina al ritmo de Los Panchos, escuchando a la WHOM de New York. [interference: Cb radio pirate] [radio breaks in] pirate_ This is the voice of Comandante Ruiz broadcasting from Radio Sandino in exile. I must inform the American public that the last elections in Nicaragua were substantially affected by the thirteen million dollars in U.S. aid to Violeta Chamorro's campaign. [sound of interference] newscaster_ We interrupt this broadcast. In Washington tonight, state officials are meeting with the Motion Picture Association of America to discuss the latest findings of the Rockefeller Report on the export of American entertainment to Bolivia, Columbia, Peru, Nicaragua, Paraguay... [music: Mexican singing a parodic version of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”: Oye, dame tu mano, quiero rascarme aquí, quiero rascarme acá, quiero rascarme aquí...] [music: Mexican version of “Shake Rattle'n'Roll”] [music: La Lupe sings “Fever”: Fever de mañana, fiebre en la noche azul. Todo el mundo tiene fiebre, eso bien que lo sé yo. Tener fiebre no es de ahora, hace mucho tiempo que empezó. Dame tu fiebre...] [stadium crowds cheer] teacher's voice with eco_ La calcutización, la tijuanización, la fronterización, la tropicalización, la rascuachización, la picuización... This is bilingual radio, a continental infection, and there's no antidote for it. [music: Latin musak with lots of horns] voices that sound like those of a tv ad_ Para los niños en América Latina, la primera figura de autoridad es una “miss”. Ya después, llamar a la reina de la belleza “Miss Universo” no representa ningún problema.Kids in Caracas love Kellogg's cornflakes for breakfast.En Chile, los corn chips se llaman “Crispies”. In Cuba, all detergent is “Fab”. En México, el pan para sandwiches es “Wonder” o “Bimbo”. In Costa Rica, the automatic teller is called “Anglomatic”. Sadly enough, en California, Colorado, Arizona y Florida, English Only was approved. But what will happen to words like barbecue, lasso, or even salsa? Linguofutorologists predict that chile con carne will be renamed pepper steak and will be served at McDonald's, and Speedy Gonzalez will become Speedy Gordon and will be featured in Cyberpunk movies. [music: Speedy Gonzalez] radio announcer_ This is radio frontera FM, spoiling your dinner as always, 200 megahertz en todas las direcciónes. [music: 1950s Latin orchestra] male voice with thick spanish accent_ Queridos radioescuchas, les habla Joaquín Esteban Taylor, ministro de cultura de Panama. Some of you have expressed concern that we may be losing our culture. It is true that the U.S. dollar is our official currency, and that our president was sworn in at a U.S. military base. Pero les aseguro que seguimos tan panameños y tan latinos como siempre. [music: Medio Evo's nonsensical bolero:... y propongo que de una vez y por todas, sea respetado el rumbo que requiere el país nacional, el cual atraviesa por una coyuntura historica indisolu, en cuanto a la estructura que se...] [music: Indigenous Mexican music] voice in megaphone music_ Nuestros centros culturales chicanos deben promover el ballet folclórico, el muralismo y el teatro alegórico como expresiones idiosincráticas de nuestra raza, única y auténtica. female voice_ Due to pressures from the Mexican secretaria de turismo, Huichol and Chamula Indian crafts must remain authentic, at least until 1992. [GG-P_ speaks in tongues] auctioneer voice_ 30, 40, 100, 300, no, 3.000 years of Mexican art at the Metropolitan Museum. An adventure in wisdom and pride. female voice with eco_ Authentic art, authentic nostalgia, quality control. [repeats] [music: Yomo Toro on guitar] GG-P_ Come to Vieques. Enjoy our tropical warmth. CF_ Rest on our immaculate beaches, the whitest sand on earth. GG-P_ Shop for our colorful crafts. CF_ Date our exotic men and women. GG-P_ Drink our Bacardi rum at sunset on the terrace of your bungalow. Come to Vieques. You will sleep peacefully. You will be protected by the U.S. military bases that occupy most of our island. male voice_ Call your travel agent or your nearest navy recruitment center. female voice_ This announcement was brought to you by the Boriquen Chamber of Commerce. [music: Latin musak jingle] CF_ Well, I would say that my identity has always been a problem for most people. They are constantly trying to change it. When I was born, the nuns in the hospital thought they were doing my parents a favor by classifying me as white. Then my mother got deported just after I was born and took me to Cuba with her, where everyone saw me as a mulatica clarita. GG-P_ I am my parent's youngest and darkest child. I was born morenito y peludo, dark and hairy thing at the Spanish Hospital of Mexico City. MJ_ Was this a problem for you, Gwermo? GG-P_ Not really. Ninety percent of all Mexicans were mestizos like me. In a sense, I grew up raceless. CF_ My parents tried to raise me without a sense of race, but that was unrealistic. My abuela, who came to live with us in 1963, she was happy that I was light enough for her to call me “la princesa francesa”. MJ_ The French princess, you mean? [1950's Tango Music] GG-P_ Now that you say that, Coco, I realize that my world wasn't completely raceless either. I became aware of skin privilege when my slightly darker schoolmates began to treat me with extra respect. To them I was white, sort of. MJ_ But what does it mean to be white in Mexico? GG-P_ To come from “buena familia”, to be mysteriously linked to Spain. See, in Mexico, race has more to do with class. But wait, let me ask you something - has anybody here ever asked you what it means to be white here? MJ_ Well, not really. But I'm asking questions. So the, Coco, do you think your parents were trying to hide something from you to protect you? GG-P_ What kind of a question is that? MJ_ Let her answer! CF_ Not exactly. They knew that the Civil Rights movement wasn't going to end racial classification, but they didn't want me to be psychologically impaired by it. They found a private school where they thought I wouldn't have to deal with my race in negative terms. I entered in 1966 as a child of color. MJ_ And? CF_ Segregation had been supplanted by separatism. No one was into the idea of “mixed race”. And whenever I took national exams, I had to check an ethnic background box, and I couldn't find one for myself. So I always marked Other. Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans hadn't been lumped together yet. [music: kitsch harps] MJ_ Do you think things got better for you when people started using the word “Hispanic”? CF_ People were still confused about whether I was black or not. At the end of high-school, three administrators - a black, a Chicano, and a Jew - were deciding if I was eligible for a minority scholarship; the black said no, the Chicano said yes, and the Jew said that I should ask my mother if we had any African ancestors. They weren't convinced by my little Afro. Have you ever thought about your ancestors? MJ_ Well no. Gwermo, didn't you arrive in this country just as Americans started to employ the term “Hispanic”? Do you think that helped them to understand who you were? GG-P_ They had a lot of other terms for me besides “Hispanic”. When I crossed the border in 1978, I ipso facto became a greaser, a wetback, a meskin. At the time, I didn't understand what those words implied. MJ_ I'm getting really confused. Well, I've just been told that that's about all the time for today. Thank you for joining us for Buscando América. Next week, we'll have Professor Malcolm Stevens from Purdue University talking to us about indigenous basket weaving traditions at the Tex-Mex border. [music: ranchero tune] [sound of ticking clock] pachuco voice_ Sssspanglish, the language of pop-cultural diplomacy... Ssssspanglish is our language, yeah. This is the voz of the future, 1992, American glasnost con safos. [music: Tex-Mex tune] CF_ Border lunch menu on the U.S. side. Our specials today are tofu enchiladas, taco salad, fajita pita, barbecue burritos and pizzadillas. GG-P_ Border lunch menu on the Mexican side. Hot-dogs wrapped in bacon and covered with salsa picada, hamburguesas en mole verde and Kentucky Fried tripa. female voice_ Art menu for the 1990's: Chicano magical realists, Native American conceptual artists, Dominican rappers and Asian performance artists. America is wonderfully strange, and cheap. male voice_ Hey there, stranger, looking for a fun way to spend the evening? Doesn't matter where you are, you'll always find affordable prices for the cultural Other. A muscular mestizo in Tijuana, only $25. A mulata beauty in Havana, only $35. A Nuyorican in Los Sures, only $15. female voice_ El otro siempre sabe mejor. [GG-P speaks in tongues, interpersed names of computer brands such as “IBM” and “Macintosh”.] CF_ I met a homeless man in Santiago who dressed up as a Mapuche Indian. He wore a sign on his chest that said: “Authentic Indian made in Chile”. GG-P_ I remember the “real live Aztec dancers” Niagra Falls who swore they spoke Nahuatl. They performed colorful rituals for the mesmerized tourists. They were actually undocumented ex-mechanics from Mazatlan. female voice_ Yaqui, Seri, Guaycura, Diegueño, Barona, Seminole, Comanchero, Tuscarora. Romantic dots on tourist maps. Romantic words in empty ears; cambio de canal. [music: Corazón de Melon (cha-cha-cha): ...Corazón de melon, de melon melon melon melon, corazón de melon. Your heart is a watermelon heart, just a watermelon heart...] mexican barker voice_ “Amor Salvaje”, el nuevo supervideo de Madonna y Julio Iglesias ya está a la venta en su tienda favorita. En su compra recibirá gratuitamente un paquete con diez simpáticos preservativos para que el “Amor Salvaje” no lo traicione. male voice_ Dear listener, do you know the difference between cultural exchange and colonialism? Between vampirism and creative appropriation? We are here to help you figure it out. Today, we are going to talk to Enrique Mendez Orduño, adviser on Latin American Affairs for Arteamérica, a new program of the United States Information Agency. [ drum music] maexican radio announcer_ Nuevas aventuras para toda la familia. Buenos Aires cartelera doble: “The Terminator” and “The Incredible Hulk”. San Francisco double bill: “Bronson, Vengador Asesino” and “Mojados Precolombinos contra la Sico-Migra”. [music: Charlie Parker playing “La Cucaracha”] [cafeteria sounds] female voice with spanish accent_ That guy was handing out flyers about Latino cultural identity. I wonder if he's been anywhere in Latin America lately. Lots of middle-class women there dye their hair blond. female voice with american accent_ They are not the only ones who do that sort of thing. I've seen more than a few gringas progresistas who wear huaraches and huipiles. female nº 1_ Ok, ok, I get it; so everybody wants to be the other. Is that the point? female nº 2_ Or sleep with them. [They crack up] female nº 1_ Really, I'm not kidding - hey, check out that music. La Cucaracha - in Russian! [Russian woman sings “La Cucaracha”] mexican radio announcer_ America is no longer the continent that you imagine. Audio-graffitti FM, buscando un nuevo lenguage para expresar sus temores y deseos interculturales. [music: game show jingle] master of ceremonies_ Hi, everybody out there. It's time for your favorite radio contest, Pura Bicultura. We'll play you the sound, and you just phone in with the answer. Tell us what it is or who's singing it, and you will immediately win an airplane ticket to any city in the American continent with the exception of Havana, of course, ha ha! Our number is 270-LOCO. LOCO! Here's our first sound of evening. Hey! american sings in spanish with thick accent_ De la Sierra Marenga, cielito lindo, vienen cantando. Un par de ojitos negros, cielito lindo, de contrabando. Ay yay yay, Frito Bandito! [music: game show jingle] female announcer_ Esta es radio educación. Construyendo un nuevo lenguage para nuestro atormentado continente, América poscolombina. [sounds of typewriters] male newscaster nº 1_ Good evening. At the top of the news tonight, the American television series Kojak is voted the most popular show in the Peruvian Andes. male newscaster nº 2_ A Columbian drug lord claims his role models are Al Pacino and Marlon Brando. male newscaster nº 1_ Two Mixteco migrant workers were shot to death by an All-American Death squad in Encinitas, California. male newscaster nº 2_ A Chicago appellate court decides that the firing of a Guatemalan supermarket cashier for speaking Spanish on the job was not racially motivated. male newscaster nº 1_ The Pope and the King of Spain are preparing the 500th celebration of the discovery of America. Twelve Latin American countries have decided to participate. [music: old-fashioned circus band] CF_ 3.000 U.S. citizens live in Guantánamo base, and 17.000 in Vieques. GG-P_ 100.000 homes in Baja California, are owned by U.S. citizens. CF_ There are 26.000 U.S. troops in the Panama canal zone and 25.000 in Tegucigalpa. GG-P_ The second largest Mexican city is Los Angeles. CF_ The second largest Salvadoran city is Los Angeles. GG-P_ The second largest Puerto Rican city is New York. CF_ The second largest Dominican city is New York. GG-P_ The second largest Cuban city is Miami. [an echo repeats: the second largest, the second largest...] CF_ The second largest Nicaraguan city is Miami. male newscaster nº 1_ This is Trans-American Radio, interrupting you coitus, as always. Buenas noches. [music: Mercado Negro playing “La Cucaracha”, punk-style.]

FUSCO, Coco and GÓMEZ-PEÑA, Guillermo. "Norte : Sur_ A Performance Radio-Script". In: Caderno Videobrasil. Associação Cultural Videobrasil, nº1, pp. 73-77, São Paulo, 2005.