The Couple in the Cage

Stephanie Musat
CAS 100
Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Pena’s the Couple in the Cage is a social experiment that sought to discover audiences’ reactions to an exhibit where indigenous people were put on display in museums. Although the setting is perfect for an art display, Fusco and Gomez-Pena’s exhibit could be debated on whether it should be considered art. I consider art as something that an artist creates which would trigger a response from another party. This experiment certainly resulted with emotion from the looker-on’s however the premise of the experiment is based on farce. The experiment tricked people and because of this, I believe that the Couple in the Cage lost credibility in the art world.
The Couple in the Cage documents the traveling performance of Guillermo Gomez -Pena and Coco Fusco, in which they exhibited themselves as caged Amerindians from an imaginary island in the Gulf of Mexico. While the artists’ intent was to create a satirical commentary on the notion of discovery, it became obvious that many of their viewers actually believed the fiction and thought the artists were real savages. “Rather than offering a critique of contemporary (or even modern) ethnographic theory and practice, The Couple in the Cage uses the ethnographic burlesque in the service of a shameful ethnology, practices associated with the early history of ethnographic writing and display and with popular entertainment” (Altick 1978).
Despite obvious indications that the experiment was not true – like Fusco wearing Converse sneakers – the general public took the experiment at face-value without challenging what they saw. The scene consisted of Gomez-Pena and Fusco in a cage with a living room set up, complete with television, chairs and a table. Gomez-Pena and Fusco would meander around the cage, interjected with the occasional dance and meals. The audience was allowed to take pictures with them and if they paid $5, Gomez-Pena would show his genitalia. The point of this set up was to infuse a modern set up with ancient practices, a modern audience with an ancient act, to see how the two would react to each other. While on display the artists' "traditional" daily rituals ranged from sewing voodoo dolls, to lifting weights to watching television to working on laptop computers. During feeding time museum guards passed bananas to the artists and when the couple needed to use the bathroom they were escorted from their cage on leashes. For a small donation, Fusco could be persuaded to dance (to rap music) or both performers would pose for Polaroids. By pretending to be native people, Fusco and Gomez exploited people’s gullibility by convincing them that they were unfamiliar with modern society because of complete isolation.
Gomez-Pena was born in Mexico but moved to the United State in1978. He received his degree from California Institute of the Arts. Fusco is an artist from New York City and received her degree from Brown University and her Master of Arts from Stanford University. Both have lived in America for many decades and have assimilated into American culture. This project claims that they are indigenous people from a made-up island, which discredits Pena and Fusco as performers. Although a theatrical performance, this differs drastically from a typical piece of theater. In a play, the audience knows that what they are about to see is fiction – that actors are assuming a role. In The Couple in the Cage, the public does not know that the display is fake. In fact, there were curators there to convince the audience that the display was real. Part of the reason as to why the display was seen as real was because there were curators telling the unknowing public that they display was actually indigenous people. They were the experts in this situation and by telling a group of unknowing people that something is fact, they will take it as such. The collaboration between the curators and the artists is what helped the experiment become so successful. There were people there telling the audience the information that the actors could not convey. It was obvious that the people in the cage were foreign but the curators there provided the background information which completed the picture and made everything more believable (Kwon 46). Although the intent of the actors was not to fool an audience into believing that they were indigenous people, this tended to be the case despite the root meaning of the project. They were making a satire on how stereotyped primitive cultures are, and how they were treated in the past. It is explained that it was supposed to be a form of art, and the actors didn't even expect that people would believe them to be authentic.
This exhibit toured around the world and made stops in virtually every major city. The cage performance has been carried out in Madrid, London, Washington D.C., Irvine, California, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. That performance has been selected for the 1992 Sydney Biennale and the 1993 Whitney Biennial. Major cities in developed areas tend to be hubs for curiosity because the general public is relatively well educated and those who saw the exhibit are obviously interested in history and art because they were in a museum. The success of this experiment was because they targeted the right group of people – a group that had no knowledge about the subject but was eager to find out. If this were one display in a public place in a less developed area, the reaction would be significantly different. “The record of their interactions with audiences in four countries dramatizes the dilemma of cross-cultural misunderstanding we continue to live with today,” Fusco said on her Web site. “Their experiences are interwoven with archival footage of ethnographic displays from the past, giving an historical dimension to the artists’ social experiment. The Couple in the Cage is a powerful blend of comic fiction and poignant reflection on the morality of treating human beings as exotic curiosities.” The group incorporated the premise of invasion – a hegemonic power entering a non-threatening area to conquer the land and the people there for their own benefit. This historical commentary is in the form of a creative investigation and interpretation of the discovery of America and the 1993 Whitney Biennial.
Also, if this were to be put on today, fewer people would believe it because there are new and available resources where people would be able to check the authenticity of something via the Internet. “The function of the ethnographic displays as popular entertainment was largely superseded by industrialized mass culture. Not unsurprisingly, the popularity of these human exhibitions began to decline with the emergence of another commercialized form of voyeurism--the cinema--and the assumption by ethnographic film of their didactic role.” Within two days, something on the internet would tell the public that the exhibit is not real, debunking the entire experiment.
The experiment resulted in a point that only reached a small portion of the people who saw the display. Because it was believable, the message that it was supposed to be a satirical commentary did not translate well through the audience. When people are at a museum, they tend to think that what they are going to see is fact and therefore turn off all observational skepticism and automatically take whatever they see as fact. It did not result in huge fame for Fusco or Gomez-Pena, nor did it become a staple in modern American art. It was successful in being a satirical commentary and proved that people believe what they are told without utilizing any sort of rational thinking, especially when whatever is being said is confirmed by an expert.
Overall, the act did trigger a response, whether awe, sympathy or outrage, from the audience and by the criteria which I stated above, this would be a successful piece of art. However, the message which the group was trying to convey, specifically the idea that this is a satirical message about conquering a land and claiming it as your own, did not filter through the entire audience, resulting with some people actually believing what they saw.
The Couple in the Cage would certainly satisfy the requirements of being considered an Art-in-the-public-interest piece because it took an issue affecting society and manipulated it into an art form for the general public. However there are two main issues that I have that would stop this exhibit from being considered art. The Number one is that a majority of the public did not understand the message that was trying to get across. Gomez-Pena and Fusco are preaching that conquering another area where there are already people is inhumane, drawing parallels between the discovery of America and being caged for display. There was no obvious connection so the audience took the exhibit at face-value and didn’t understand the actual message. The second issue is that the premise is based on lies. There is no such island and Gomez-Pena and Fusco dressed up to trick the audience. If the message was clearer, then people would not be fooled as easily and therefore it could be considered art. However because the intent, to produce a social commentary, did not trickle down to the audience, leaving many confused, and the art incomprehensible.

Works cited

Fusco, Coco. “Coco Fusco’s virtual laboratory.” 2 November 2007. http://thing.net/~cocofusco/

Kelly, M. K. Performing the other: a consideration of two cages. College Literature. 1999: 113-36H.W. Wilson. Syracuse University Library, Syracuse, New York. 4 October 2007.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “The ethnographic burlesque.” TDR. 1998: 175-180. H.W. Wilson. Syracuse University Library, Syracuse, New York. 4 October 2007.

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