The reading “The Other History of Intercultural Performance” by Coco Fusco explores the concept of performing the identity of an Other for a white audience. Coco and their collaborator Guillermo Gomez- Penia intended to explore Western concepts of the exotic, primitive other, using satirical commentary. In this performance piece, they lived in a golden cage for three days, presenting themselves as undiscovered Amerindians. Coco explains how the performance was meant to focus less on what they did, and more on how people interacted and interpreted their actions. Coco explained how the practice of exhibiting indigenous people began with Christopher Columbus, who had an Indigenous Arawak person on display for two years at the Spanish Court. As an uninformed white person who was taught a biased view of history, these accounts were disturbing to read… The article explained how “At the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago, ethnographic displays of peoples from Africa and Asia were set up outside the ‘White City’, an enclosed area celebrating science and industry.”The reading listed a number of examples throughout history of the ethnographic displays of people, as late as 1992. Coco explains how these people were not on display by choice, and this led to the fetishization of exotic artifacts and the people who made them. I agree with Coco’s point that a “naturalized splitting” of humanity among racial lines must be established in order to justify genocide. I also agree that displaying these differences in the body on display in a cage encouraged the fetishized representations of Otherness. Coco argues that even today, people's desire to look at “otherness” from a safe distance persists. Coco then explains how in their own cage experiment, audiences quickly revealed their familiarity with the scene alluded to, detailing how a man insisted on paying $10 to feed Coco a banana. Coco explained that the reaction to their live performance was broad. Some people felt discomfort in the displaying of other humans, while others were okay with it. Some people believed it was real, while others questioned them for being too dark-skinned, or too light-skinned. Some people threw urine-filled beer cans and attacked them, while others sat and stared for hours. But to sum up most of the interactions, the audience assumed the role of the colonizer. The audience assumed they could not understand them speaking, and objectified their bodies. Coco noted how the women actually made more physical sexual advances toward Penia, while she was verbally assaulted. I found this reading to be very interesting overall. It is fascinating to see the type of behaviors people think are acceptable when you are performing, or in a cage
