The Other History of Intercultural Performance

Author Coco Fusco wrote an article titled, "The Other History of Intercultural Performance". Fusco writes on European and the United States and their early days of colonization. She explains the concept of "living practice" which I thought was a little interesting to say the least. This was a concept of intercultraul performance. It is difficult for me to understand what exactly this was, but for what I can understand it sounds like a sort of exhibit, for nonwhite people. People were supposed to open up their bodies for exhibits so that they were displayed as art. This was to critique the racial and gender violence that was hppening at this time. This was through interpretation of the physical body. Seeing as I don't quite understand what was really going on here, it is hard to explain this. Although, havign bodies put on display as art is a weird concept in my opinion. There is a picture on the article of someone inside a cage and someone on the outside is feeding them food. What?! I do not really know if this acutally helped them understadn the racial issues during this time period but I sure hope so. It is explained that Fusco as well was a perfomance artist so that makes sense on why she would write an article on it. I can see, however, how it would change the stereotypes that people would have. These still exsist today so I think this can be applied to our generation especially. People have stereotypes by the way they dress, eat, look, act, who they are friends with, etc. Through these stereotypes, people are judged. I think this is a huge fault of our generation and especially here at this school. I'm not quite sure how Fusco was as a person, but she is obviously pretty passionate about what she believes. She seemed to start alot of upraor abour her beliefs and for that, I praise her.