The Couple in the Cage: Dialogic Art at its Worst
By: Blair Dudik

Art is culture in that it functions as a medium of ideas and beliefs of a group of people. Chartres Cathedral and Venus of Willendorf depict the values and motivations of an ancient culture, and analyzing these can make it easier to understand the way of life of the individuals living during the era (Fiero 6,297). Art history is not necessarily a study of previous creations, but a study of why such works were created. There are many incentives, including religion, survival, commemoration, and beauty, however, the sophistication and drive for understanding that is prevalent today has greatly altered these traditional underlying inducements in a new form of art: dialogic art. Artists are no longer historians but philosophers as well. They attempt to understand the problems of society and solve them through public forms of artwork, which has completely altered the spectrum and purpose of art. In many cases, the audience actually participates in the formation of the art, becoming subjects instead of just viewers (Kwon 117). In this example, the author sets the stage so that people may learn and grow, while the audience does not analyze the author’s perceptions and portrayals, but instead analyzes themselves as a member of various societies and cultures. This evolved form of art acts as an instructor showing people their failings (as structured by the author) so that they may understand and hopefully correct them.
In Coco Fusco’s and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s The Couple in the Cage, the group tried to bring awareness to the public through an obvious satire (Verhagen 22). They traveled to various museums in cities across the globe, including London, Sydney, New York, Madrid, and Buenos Aires pretending to be “Amerindians” from an undiscovered island (Taylor 163). In a description of their dress, Gómez-Peña expressed himself as an, “Aztec wrestler from Las Vegas,” and Fusco as a, “Taina straight out of Gilligan’s Island” (Kershaw 601). They made voodoo dolls, worked on a laptop, watched television, and, for a fee, danced to music and posed for pictures (Taylor 163).
This “art” was partly intended to be a response to the act of Christopher Columbus taking Native Americans back to Spain as caged animals (Taylor 161). As stated before, this project was supposed to be an obvious satire, and when the attendees took the display seriously, Fusco and her companion mocked them in their later writings, quotes, and film. “Consistently from city to city, more than half of our visitors believed our fiction and thought we were ‘real’” (Kershaw 602). Yet the only inclinations that the exhibit was a pretence were the clothes and activities. Even with these links to modern culture, the two “Amerindians” were presented as authentic (Kershaw 602). They were displayed at a museum, which, in itself, legitimizes the event (Verhagen 22). Fusco and Gómez-Peña pretended not to speak English, so “zoo guards” were present to fabricate information. Even a fake map from an Encyclopedia Britannica was displayed as further evidence (Taylor 163).
How can these people be criticized? Yes, they were fooled, but this is not something new. The television series Punked on MTV profits from fooling people. The exhibit was presented as legitimate, so why should people not believe it? I can not be sure what was actually said to the viewers about the modern clothes and activities, but from my research there was probably an excuse for those as well. One goes to a museum to be informed, not to be deceived, so those who saw the exhibit were already under the assumption that what they were seeing was something straight from National Geographic.
Another argument that could be made is that the people who actually participated in the “art” by posing with the “Amerindians” and feeding them bananas were naive. Much focus is placed on this, yet those who were outraged are ignored (Verhagen 22), and the fifty percent of attendees who did not accept the scenario are forgotten (Kershaw 602). Yet even those who participated have an excuse. The zoo guards fed Fusco and Gómez-Peña sandwiches and fruit (Taylor 163), so by Bandura’s social cognitive theory, onlookers thought it would be acceptable to feed the “Amerindians” as well (Heyes 504). The theory states that:

“to imitate, an observer must (1) attend to a model’s action, (2) store the information about the action in the form of some sort of ‘symbolic conception’ that can be used to generate and select behavioral variants, and (3) execute behavior derived from the symbolic conception when (4) motivated to do so”(Heyes 504).

In other words, seeing the exhibit attendants may have led some to believe that it would be acceptable to feed the “Native Americans,” especially if the attendants encouraged them to do so. The people did not know if it was or was not a hoax. The stipulations surrounding The Couple in the Cage made it appear legitimate, so the people cannot and should not be blamed.
Also, it is not fair to argue that because a few deceived people acted foolishly, “colonial unconscious…structures the Western psyche” (Kershaw 602). Now, once again, I cannot be sure whether the visitors were told that the couple came on their own will or not, but for the most part people are intelligent, compassionate, and would never condone slavery. Our sins from the past do not determine who we are, which is something that Fusco and Gómez-Peña do not seem to understand.
These artists may also be trying to communicate modernized views of third world civilizations, but if they are it seems a futile attempt. A good deal of money is already being given to Africa, research is being done to help cure diseases rapid in poorer countries, and much more is happening to help those less fortunate. Modernized countries, for the most part, are not colonizing and taking over land that belongs to native persons any more. It is true that many countries, especially the United States, have made huge mistakes in the past as far as usurping the rights of other human beings, but that does not mean that people today would do the same if they had the chance. Like Damali Ayo’s Panhandling for Reparations, Fusco and Gómez-Peña bring up non-issues for the sake of making a ruckus.
This project is actually less of an artwork and more of an experiment. However, the architects introduced variables that skewed the results. They have the mindset that if a tree falls in the woods, and a carpenter emerges from the woods, he is responsible for the fall of the tree. The subjects were placed under an extraneous situation unfit to test a hypothesis; it cannot be determined whether or not Western culture has an “appetite for such inhumane exoticism,” as Fusco and Gómez-Peña seem to think (Verhagen 22). As far as one of these new forms of art, it was pointless. It did not introduce social, economic, or political problems to an oblivious audience. The audience did function as subjects, though they operated more as white mice instead of co-creators of a piece of dialogic art. In order for the project to function properly, the subjects should have learned from their interactions. Not only did they gain no insight, but “the simple stratagem of refusing to signal clearly the ontological status of its codes, this spectacle risked reinforcing the very forces it aimed to subvert,” if there was even a defined issue in the first place (Kershaw 602). In many cases art cannot solve social issues, if there is even a problem to begin with (Kester 182).
The whole project would have been more effective if the artists in charge had not pretended the scenario was real, but instead clearly staged the event in commemoration of those who were denied rights as human beings. This would have made the viewers think about the abuses of power in the past, look for the same situation in the present, and possibly make them reconsider the glory of “our” culture versus “their[’s],” or whatever the creators were hoping to make people understand (Kershaw 602).

Works Cited

Fiero, Gloria. The Humanistic Tradition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Heyes, Cecilia. Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development.Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2001.

Kershaw, Baz. “Curiosity or Contempt: On Spectacle, the Human, and Activism.” Theatre Journal 55.4 (December 2003): 591-611.

Kester, Grant. Conversation Pieces. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004.

Kwon, Miwon. One Place After Another. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002.

Taylor, Diana. “A Savage Performance: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco's ‘Couple in the Cage.’” The Drama Review 42.2.158 (Summer 1998): 160-174.

Verhagen, Marcus. “Nothing If Not Satirical: The Nunnery London.” Art Monthly (March 2004): 21-22.