“Hey, you! Yeah, you. Are you tired of flipping through endless songs to jam out to while getting ready for a night out? Or struggling to find the perfect radio station on your morning drive to work? Well, look no further than here at the Bucknell Griot Institute for the Study of Black Lives & Cultures. Down at the Griot, we’ve got it all; beautiful blogs written by stupendous student interns, progressive projects, and the most amazing of them all, this podcast! Anchored by the admirable and ambitious student intern Athaliah Elvis, this podcast has got it all! So, whether you’re getting ready for the ‘pre’, cleaning your room, or cruising down One Dent Drive, this station is the one for you.”
The radio station clicks on and audio pours in.
“Gooooood Morning Bucknellians, looking like a beautiful day here in the Burg. Some clouds to start us off—”
Abruptly, the station is changed to a more relevant forecast.
“and an increased demand for Athaliah’s podcast (that doesn’t exist). It’s sparked a national (more like local) cry for more episodes. When will the next one be released and can we see a series coming in the future? So many questions!”
With one more twist of the stereo knob, a familiar voice fills the car.
“ — with me today is the incredibly fashionable interdisciplinary artist Coco Fusco!”
Coco Fusco: Thank you!
Athaliah: Let’s dive right in. As I was reading about you online and viewing your work, I took note that you believe in incorporating cultural notes and practices in your art; specifically in regards to you, notes of Cuba. I’m curious about why it is important to you?
Coco Fusco: Well, not everything I have done has to do with Cuba, but it has developed into a line of investigation that has been in existence since the 80’s. I didn’t grow up in an extremely right-winged community because that’s mostly in Miami and I grew up in New York, but I had contact with relatives in the second exiled community in New Jersey. I was exposed to the point of view and experiences of the exiles who fled and were impacted by the situation in Cuba. I acknowledge that there are a lot of reasons to be upset, but at the same time I just wanted to know more than what my family was saying about Cuba especially when everyone’s point of view is the same. I was curious to know what else there is to know. I remember I met some artists who were visiting from Cuba in the 80’s and they invited me to go. I thought here’s my opportunity to go and see so much about a world I’d only ever heard of through my family. I went and I was intrigued about the many things I had in common with them since they lived on the other side of reality. I started to go more consistently and develop more relationships; and at the time it was the Cold War so you had to be there for professional reasons or to go visit family. I was writing about stuff, making films, curating exhibitions, and the relationships just continued. Now, a lot of the people I met on those visits don’t live in Cuba anymore. There’s been waves of immigration and in 2008 when the leadership of Cuba changed people saw it as the beginning of the end of something that had been going on for a while. I was interested in doing archaeology of the history of artists that challenged the system. I started working on a series of films about that. Around this time the internet became more accessible to Cubans and communication got a lot easier. Also, the people on the island had more access to information outside and it completely changed the way communication occurred. There was an outpouring from artists and intellectuals with the internet as individual publications, music and other forms of media outside of the state channels. They (artists) were able to more openly express themselves. Many of the people who were getting arrested for standing against the government’s position were people who had worked with me on projects and stuff. I began to get more involved in the activism part of the art. At this point of my life I don’t really question why I do it anymore, it’s just something I’m involved in. I felt that if I was going to recognize some type of connection to being Cuban-American, I would have to be connected to the culture and to be connected to the culture means to be connected to the language, the people, activities, and be engaged as you participate in the actual making of culture. Not just stand there and say that because of your name or lineage you are this. To me, that’s not really valid as a way to define oneself.
Athaliah: That makes me wonder about the difference in art within countries that are more conservative and repressed compared to countries that are more free—
Coco Fusco: Well, we’re becoming more like Cuba everyday—
Athaliah: Yeah, we are *I laugh at the funny, but painfully true statement* I wonder if art is supposed to be something that is a form of expression, how does that work in a world where you’re not allowed to say certain things?
Coco Fusco: I think the thing that distinguishes art from journalism is that most journalism is about stating facts and most artists are not necessarily stating facts. It’s more about elaborating ways of understanding and proposing ways of seeing and thinking that aren’t necessarily tied to facts. You find ways to work around prohibitions with metaphors, allegories, masking things or making things intentionally vague. There are examples of when artists would use historical narratives to talk about events of the past that correlate to the present as to avoid scrutiny from the government. Artists have strategies.
Athaliah: As a follow up, I wanted to know in what ways have your culture and life experiences influenced your work and how have you made your intangible experiences tangible to others?
Coco Fusco: I mean, I’m not writing an autobiography with my artwork, but at the same time I understand that when I’m making work my experiences inform what I produce. I don’t necessarily focus on trying to express my life story in my artwork, I just make the work and I take it for granted in a sense that who I am as a person will shape the choices that I make.
Athaliah: The reason I asked that is because for me, as a writer, often my work is strongly influenced by my experiences and different aspects of my life. It’s often a reflection of me, so I wanted to know if that was something you practiced.
Coco Fusco: You know, a lot of young artists do that because they’re at a stage of their life where they haven’t fully developed and their life is a big deal to them. And there are older artists who still practice that, but I tell my students that I will only work with material from my own life if I thought that it was meaningful. I also just get tired of just thinking about myself and there are other issues in the world that are much more vital to me.
Athaliah: I understand. My next question is about your experience as a woman of color in terms of difficulties you have in the Art World space. Do you often have conflicts with what you want to produce vs. what you are being asked to produce? And do you find it difficult to find support and do you feel supported in what you want to communicate in your art as a woman of color?
Coco Fusco: Okay, so I would say that it’s much harder at the beginning when nobody knows who you are and it’s hard when you’re in a social and political context where there is no appreciation for anything outside the Eurocentric paradigm. I would say that things are somewhat different from when I was growing up, but not completely different. I mean, look at the current political moment. It’s full of a desire to move backward and retract all of that stuff. Sure, there are difficulties, but my mom was an immigrant, short Black woman from the Caribbean who was widowed very early and had to support kids and parents and cousins. She did it, and with much more difficulty than I face. I see myself as having had a lot more advantages than my mother and grandmother, while at the same time recognizing that I don’t know whether people who aren’t like me would have been questioned on their skills and proficiency as an artist. Like the constant challenging of whether or not I belong is something that I’ve experienced occasionally still. The problems also have more to do with financial than personal. How much money you have determines how much you can make, especially working with film and video. I need a crew of several different people and paying people is costly. The biggest challenge is to get the money. In terms of what I’m asked to do, if someone is asking me to do something that I really don’t want to do and it’s not financially attractive I just don’t do it.
Athaliah: A lot of the time a career as an artist can be self-funded or heavily rely on grants and scholarships, which is something I am not always aware of. It’s something that requires a lot of financial support and stability. Especially if you do have an entire team of people needed for the project.
Coco Fusco: Every artist needs money, even if you’re working from home. Most people don’t get grants and even if you do, most of the time it’s not enough.
Athaliah: True. I’m curious how you went about starting your career as an interdisciplinary artist?
Coco Fusco: I had a professor in my undergrad who was an artist. He was my film professor and he was a really great teacher. We became friends and I went to work for him after I graduated from college. I gained lots of experience working with him in the avant-garde scene in New York and through him got to meet lots of other artists and filmmakers. I got a real sense of what it would be like to be in that world and he was really instrumental in the exposure that I got by working for people.
Athaliah: That sounds great and truly amazing. When you’re producing content, what goes into your thought process? Do all of your pieces have a significant meaning or are some of them just for fun?
Coco Fusco: I think it’s better to ask critiques about stuff like that because I’m not really the best judge. Getting an art project off the ground can be so complicated; there’s conceptualization then there’s fundraising and selecting a venue. There’s so much planning that I don’t think I get to just do things for fun. After the November election I went to The Met and I saw this exhibition of printwork from Mexico and there were these really inspiring and brilliant satirical cartoonists who were making fun of authoritarianism and I thought if they did it, why can’t I do something like that? I’m not a cartoonist nor a draftsperson, but I can certainly edit and write captions, so I called a couple of friends and told them to go see the ‘Mexican show’ and let me know if you want to do a satirical cartoon publication about MAGA. I told them it wouldn’t be for money, we’d print newsprint on the cheap and split the printing costs. And, we did it. It’s called The Siren. We do it online in color and print in black and white. The first issue we timed its release for Inauguration Day and it was a hit. Lots of artists and cartoonists wanted to join. All these curators wanted to have it in their collections. So, now we’re working on Issue 2. I wouldn’t call it ‘for fun’, but it’s for free, which essentially means instead of getting paid, I’m paying.
Athaliah: That’s cool and that also kind of goes into my next question; if you view art as a media form as inherently political? As well as how do you see art being utilized for political action today; either in Cuba, the United States, or any other areas?
Coco Fusco: I do think it’s important to distinguish between art and propaganda. I think there is a visual culture produced for overtly political purposes to promote organized power structures which is propaganda. I’m not interested in making propaganda. I think that there are different ways in which you can think about the relationship between art and politics. And that can be artists like Picasso or artists involved in social movements. You don’t have to intend for your work to be used for political purposes or to be understood politically because it’s ultimately about perception.
Athaliah: That reminds me of something I read that referred to the politics of art and art’s place in politics specifically during the Black Arts Movement and Black Power Movement. It said that art could be used for political ways even if it wasn’t specifically made for politics and that can either be good or bad, depending on one’s perception. What do you think we (as audiences) take away from this practice when engaging in society and consuming art?
Coco Fusco: This is a tough one because I, alongside other artists, can’t predict how people are going to respond to what I do or what any other artist does. I can’t control their reactions, but what I try to stay away from is the idea that art is going to ‘solve’ a problem. I think art can make you think a lot of things, pose a lot of questions, and offer perspectives that you otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to. But I don’t think that it’s going to solve anything on its own. I think that because we’re used to thinking of the functional pieces of the material world a lot of people think that it will fix something immediately.
Athaliah: I agree, and that was a great way of putting it. Given your visit to Bucknell today, considering your work as a professor, what hopes do you have for younger generations in terms of what they might take away from your work? Even though I know you just expressed that as an artist you can’t control what people take away from your work.
Coco Fusco: I don’t have a particular audience that is more important to me than others, but I do think that sometimes it happens. I do think that younger generations have studied culture in a different way and have a global perspective in comparison to older generations. They were brought up differently, and I don’t face as much resistance from them that I do from older people. Growing up, I was the only person of color in both of my majors and my mother wasn’t happy with what I studied. There were other Black and brown students, but they were in professional tracks whereas I was involved in a creative field. Where I teach now at Cooper, it’s not like that at all. There’s a lot of students of color and lots of faculty. There’s a lot of queer students and faculty. It’s a very different world than the one that I was educated in and there’s a lot more kids of color who are trying to get a foot in the door. I’m now in a position in my career where one’s beliefs don’t affect how I go about my work. It doesn’t matter to me.
Athaliah: What a great answer, I want to thank you for your time and conclude our interview because that’s all the time we have today. You know, full-time student and all. Thank you for joining us today Coco. This is Athaliah signing off today!
Applause track cues as credits scroll for the imaginary tech team, production team, writers (myself), and special guest: Coco Fusco. The closing theme from SNL plays (but for copyright reasons, let’s pretend I have all the rights to it).
“Goodnight everybody!”