Coco Fusco,
Operation Atropos
, 2006
Coco Fusco
Operation Atropos
Coco Fusco (*1960, USA) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer. Fusco’s work combines 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. Her work is an ongoing reflection on the condition of (women’s) bodies in globalising and technologically imbued environments. Her video entitled La Plaza Vacia (The Empty Plaza, 2012), was shot in the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. It is a meditation on the legendary Cuban site as a stage devoid of human presence but filled with memories of past political performances. Later work focussed on German colonialism in West-Africa. Text: Coco Fusco
artist's website:
www.cocofusco.com
Operation Atropos
is a documentary about interrogation and POW resistance training. Director Coco Fusco worked with retired U.S. Army interrogators who subjected her group of women students to immersive simulations of POW experiences in order to show them what hostile interrogations can be like and how members of the U.S. military are taught to resist them. The group of interrogators is called Team Delta, and they regularly offer intensive courses that they call “Authentic Military Experiences” to civilians. The documentary includes interviews with the interrogators, shedding light on how they read personalities, how they evaluate the reliability of the person being interrogated, and how they use the imposition of physical and mental stress strategically. More fundamentally, however, the film shows how interrogators rationalise what they do and how they imagine both themselves and their enemies.
Text: Video Data Bank
Courtesy Video Data Bank, Chicago
Format
video, colour, sound, 59:00min
Issue date
2006
Tags
conflict
,
military
,
pain
,
torture
,
violence
Back to selection
All work by this artist
Complete Archive
About the project
Partners
Imprint
Contact
Find us on facebook
abstraction
activism
aggression
aging
appropriation
authorship
be-coming
beauty
body control
body object relation
cabaret
capitalism
childhood
collectivity
conflict
consumerism
craft
dance/choreography
de/construct identities
death
desire
destruction
dis/ability
dis/appearance
dreamscapes
durational performance
exhaustion
extended body
failure
fashion/glamour
femininity
flesh
fluxus
fragmentation
gaze
happening
health/illness
his/herstory
housework/carework
human/non-human animals
in/visibility
inscription
institutional critique
intimacy
labour
language
laughter/humorous
lecture performance
manifesto
masculinity
masquerade
mass media
maternity
measuring
metamorphosis
migration
military
music
mythology
nationalism
nature
networks/affiliations
normativity
pain
painting/drawing
participation
patriarchy
pleasure
pop
post-communism
precarity
private/public
public space
queer
queer/drag
racism
re-enactment
repetition/seriality
resistance
ritual
roleplay
score
sexual violence
sexualities
skin
sound
state oppression
stereotypes
the common
therapy
torture
touch
trash
violence
voice
voyeurism
vulnerability