Coco Fusco: How not to Sing an Anthem

i H H H H H M H H B f V ' C OC O F O S C O / l n a / t f f i f i o H ElsSegadors, v i d e o stills, 2001 • c o u r t e s y o f t h e a r t i s t ow is the other pinned down, reduced to a bundle o f stereotypical images? How does it work, the trick o f strapping another human being onto the straitjacket o f a vicarious identity? In other words, what does alienating the other's self feel and look like? These and similar interrogations form the axis around which revolves most o f Coco Fusco's work. In the past decade, from Norte:Sur (1990) to her more recent The Incredible Disappearing Woman (2000), various aspects o f the cross-cultural reshaping o f individual and community identities have been thoroughly addressed and tackled by this artist through more than a dozen installations, video documentaries and performances. In the process, she has had the talent to add to these by now mainstream concerns her own particular brand o f irony and humor. A Fusco performance and multimedia event is immediately recognizable. There are those recurring themes, o f course, but there is also a way o f dealing with them in depth, which precludes the preachy to ne or the self-serving co mplaint. Undoubtedly, this is where the humo r and irony brand o f her approach comes in, and it is maybe due to one o f her "cross-cultural " traits: Coco Fusco is an A merican o f Italian and Cuban descent. The Latino accent falls everywhere in her work, even or 74«Nka J o u r n a l o f C o n t e m p o r a r y A f r i c a n A r t perhaps especially in those pieces where she lingers on the most dramatic events that have affected the lives o f Latinos living in the United States.1 Latino accent means here a certain way o f manifesting concern through a playful, non-aggressive humor. This is, o f course, one o f those "stereotypical images" Coco Fusco's work is bent on highlighting and exploding, and the mere fact that one refers to it is a contrario proof that her attention to these all-pervading ideological elements carries with it a transcendent meaning and justification. Well aware that identity strategies are, by far, the most complex cultural issue nowadays, Fusco has had the intelligence and sensibility not to simplify the realities they encompass or merely try to convince her audience. It is not as if she had picked on a theme—multiculturalism—or a method—deconstructive parody—and then decided to couch these in politically and artistically correct forms. It is in other, more powerful ways that Fusco's "machines" work. By her origins and upbringing, and by sheer conviction, Fusco has placed her work, well before her concerns became staple commodities in the art and academic scene, at the very core o f her own search for a significant art form. Surely it is a way for this artist to deploy her work and bring in at the same time her own personal story. Viewed from this angle, her work can also be construed as manifesting a sensitive, reflective and, why not, ideological autobiography. "History is the subject o f a structure whose site is not ho mo geneous , empty time, but time filled by the presence o f the now," noted Walter Benjamin in "On the Concept o f History," one o f the last essays this Jewish German philosopher wrote before committing suicide, panic-stricken at the thought that the Spanish Guardia Civil could hand him over to the German Nazi police officers. This happened sixty-one years ago in the little town o f Port-Bou, the first or the last (depending on one's point o f view) Catalan town along the coastal border with France. When Coco Fusco came to Catalunya in June 1999, invited as visiting artist at La...