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Coco Fusco to speak at MIT

Cambridge, MA...Coco Fusco, a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist and writer known for her engaging and provocative video making and performance art, will present two public talks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) March 12 and 14 as part of MIT's Abramowitz Artist-in-Residence Program.

On Monday, March 12, she will present "What You Don't Know Can Kill You: The Art of Coco Fusco" at 8 p.m. in Kirsch Auditorium (Rm 32-123, 32 Vassar St.) in a program cosponsored by the MIT Office of the Arts and MIT's Visual Arts Program (Department of Architecture).

On Wednesday, March 14, Fusco will discuss "Gender, Sexuality and the Performance of Interrogation" at 8 p.m. in Rm 6-120 (enter at 77 Massachusetts Ave.).

Both events are free; no tickets or reservations are necessary. Info: (617) 253-ARTS (2787).

Coco Fusco

Coco Fusco's performances and videos have been featured in numerous exhibitions and festivals around the world, including the Whitney Biennial and the London International Theatre Festival. Her writings have appeared in publications such as the Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, The Nation, Ms., Art in America and frieze.

Her recent art projects combine electronic media and performance in a variety of formats, from staged multi-media performances incorporating large scale projections and closed circuit television to live performances streamed to the internet that invite audiences to chart the course of action through chat interaction.

Much of her work has focused on the social impact of globalization on disenfranchised peoples. Using ethnographic documentary forms, soap operas, talk and variety show formats, surveillance cameras and closed circuit television, Fusco has examined how different cinematic and televisual genres shape perception of social issues.

Intrigued by the role of women as “not victims, but victimizers” in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal, Fusco is currently developing a series of new videos and performances about the role of U.S. female interrogators. For her 2006 film, "Operation Atropos," the artist, in a group of six women, took a course designed for civilians who want to learn techniques both for extracting information and resisting interrogation themselves.

At last month's two-day symposium on feminist art organized by The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, Fusco took part in a panel discussion titled, "Activism/Race/Geopolitics." Calling her performance "scarifyingly funny as a send-up of feminism's much maligned sexual 'essentialism,'" the New York Times described how Fusco "strode to the podium in combat fatigues and, like a majorinstructing her troops, began lecturing on the creative ways in which women could use sex as a torture tactic on terrorist suspects, specifically on Islamic prisoners."

"The Couple in the Cage," Fusco's 1993 documentary about her caged Amerindian performance with Guillermo Gómez-Peña, has been screened in over 200 venues around the world. Her 2004 video, "a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert," was selected for the 2004 Shanghai Biennale and the Museum of Modern Arts Documentary Fortnight in 2005. Her 2002 video installation, ">Dolores from 10 to 10" received an honorable mention from the 2003 Transmediale in Berlin. The exhibition that she curated for the International Center of Photography on racial taxonomy in American photography, "Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self," is currently touring the U.S.

Fusco, who teaches at Columbia University, is the author of "English is Broken Here" (The New Press, 1995), "The Bodies That Were Not Ours and Other Writings" (Routledge/inIVA, 2001) and the editor of "Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas" (Routledge, 1999) and "Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self" (Abrams, 2003).

The Abramowitz Memorial Lecture, presented by the Office of the Arts, was established at MIT through the generosity and imagination of William L. Abramowitz '35 as a memorial to his father. It has been sustained since his death by the devoted interest of his wife and children. Since 1961, the Series has brought renowned performing artists and writers to MIT to perform, present public lectures, and collaborate with students in free programs.

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