The video features a statement given to Associação Cultural Videobrasil by the United States-based, Cuban-born artist Coco Fusco, available as an extra in the Videobrasil Authors Collection documentary Coco Fusco: I Like Girls In Uniforms. It also features excerpts from interviews granted to journalists attending the Bare Life Study #1 (2005) performance, enacted in front of the United States Consulate in São Paulo, during the 15th Festival (2005), dedicated to performance. According to Fusco, Bare Life Study #1 – her first critical artwork relating to the treatment awarded by the US military to its political prisoners – is a visual affirmation with dramatic elements. The artist devised a performative action that draws potential analogies with theater: well-defined social roles are reproduced in her performance. Fusco considers that the prisons were a “theater of combat,” since one-on-one combat with one’s enemy is virtually non-existent in modern-day warfare. A recording of the performance is featured in the Unerasable Memories – A Historic Look at the Videobrasil Collection (2014) exhibition.
- More about Coco Fusco in Collection
- Further info on Bare Life Study #1 in Collection