Week 12

Question 1

The Couple in a Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West

1992-1994

Answer 1

• An interdisciplinary arts project/social experiment that premiered in September 1992 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.
• Toured globally through musems (1992-1993)
• Written, directed and performed by Coco Fusco & Guillermo Gómez- Peña.
• Documentary directed by Paula Heredia.
• Quincentenary(500 years) of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas in 1492.
• Critique of colonialism, specifically of the role played by scientific institutions and museums in which it was performed.
• Conditioned to believe the stereotype.
• Western fantasy of non-Western peoples.
• Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco present themselves as “undiscovered Amerindians”
• Guatinaui Island & Guatinaui language & culture
• Historical abuse, captivity and exploitation of Indigenous people (Americas, Asia, and Africa).
• Reference to the historical practice human zoos, state fairs, circus of Indigenous peoples (Americas, Asia, Africa) over 500 years
• Audience members interact, take photos, see them dance, feed them, etc.

Question 2

Coco Fusco

Answer 2

• Performance Artist
• Born Juliana Emilia Fusco Miyares – 1960
• Cuban American performance artist - interdisciplinary artist
• Work explores gender, identity, race, colonialism, and power
• Performance, video, interactive installations, and critical writing
• PhD in Art and Visual Culture

Question 3

Guillermo Gómez-Peña

Answer 3

• Performance Artist
• Born 1955 – Mexico City, Mexico
• Mexican/Chicano Performance artist, writer, radical pedagogue, Public Citizen & activist against all borders –US/Mexico
• Immigration and Indigenous rights advocate
• Multiple media - including experimental radio, video, photography & installation art.
• Artistic Director of international performance troupe, La Pocha Nostra (LPN)

Question 4

La Pocha Nostra (LPN)

Answer 4

• Founded by Artistic Director, Guillermo Gómez-Peña in 1993 in Los Angeles
• La Pocha Nostra is Gómez-Peña’s ultimate and most long-standing project.”
• “La Pocha Nostra is a transdisciplinary arts organization & 501(c)(3) non-profit that provides a support network and forum for artists of various disciplines, generations, gender complexities and ethnic backgrounds. La Pocha is devoted to erasing the borders between art and politics, art practice and theory, artist and spectator.”

Question 5

Quinceañera

Answer 5

• Authors/Creators: Alberto Antonio Araiza, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, Michael Marinez, Joseph Salvatore & New WORLD Theater.
• Date - 1998 Feb. 6
• Quinceañera is a video documentation of a performance created collaboratively to address the 15th anniversary of the AIDS pandemic.
• As a collaborative creation, these stories can be read not only like personal stories, but also as the stories of a community.
• Community-based activism including storytelling, ritual, performance, and visual arts.
• The play/performance, Quinceañera is about the 15th
  anniversary HIV/AIDs epidemic (Quinceañera = girl’s 15th birthday in Latinx culture).
• The play is performed by three gay Latinx and Indigenous American men.
• Raised awareness of Queer culture and HIV/AIDS in Latinx & Indigenous gay communities.

Question 6

HIV/AIDS

Answer 6

• Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
• AIDS was first recognized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1981 and its cause—HIV infection—was identified in the early part of the decade
• Contracted and spread through unprotected sex – affecting all genders and sexualities
• Impact was illness and discrimination