English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas - Softcover

Fusco, Coco

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565842456 ISBN 13: 9781565842458

Publisher: The New Press, 1995

Synopsis

When Coco Fusco and collaborator Guillermo Gomez-Pena toured the country in a cage as "authentic natives," their provocative performance piece enraged some and enthralled others. Known for using performance to explore the boundaries of ethnicity in art, Coco Fusco has now brought her talents to bear in a volume of cultural criticism and theory, English is Broken Here. Infused with a unique cultural sensibility, English is Broken Here examines cross-cultural art issues in America at a crucial moment. Coco Fusco adds an original and eloquent voice to a growing debate over cultural identity and visual politics.

About this title

About the Author

Coco Fusco is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer. She has performed, lectured, exhibited and curated around the world since 1988. She is a recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2013 Fulbright Fellowship, a 2012 US Artists Fellowship and a 2003 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.

From Booklist

As the daughter of Cuban immigrants, Coco Fusco discusses why those who are ethnically Cuban but reside elsewhere still feel passionately about their homeland. This work includes her study of these intense feelings and discussions about other cultural issues related to being a person of color, especially Latino, in white society. Essays about contemporary artists Lorna Simpson, Pepo{¢}n Osorio, and Juan Sanchez are featured, as are interviews with Andres Serrano and Guillermo Go{¢}mez-Pen{¤}a. Serrano's photographs, along with those by Robert Mapplethorpe, ignited the far right's indignation toward NEA grant recipients. With Go{¢}mez-Pen{¤}a, Fusco co-wrote two scripts that were broadcast on National Public Radio. Especially provoking is their collaboration on "The Couple in the Cage," a performance-art piece in which they pretended to be Amerindians from an undiscovered island. Exhibited in a cage and dressed in primitive garb, the couple appeared in several museums. They kept records of the public's reactions on a laptop computer incongruously used during their time in the cage. The essay about their experiences also includes a listing of various "ethnographic exhibitions of human beings," from Christopher Columbus to 20th-century circus displays. Jennifer Henderson

About this edition

• Publisher: The New Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 1565842456
• ISBN 13: 9781565842458
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232