Artists :: Coco Fusco
Dolores 10 to 10 (United States, 2002)
http://www.thing.net/~cocofusco/

Dolores from 10 to 10 is a video installation that explores our personal and political involvement and/or disengagement with feminist labor issues in the era of globalization. The piece is designed as a simulated closed circuit television system. The actions depicted refer to the true story of a Maquiladora worker in Tijuana, Mexico. She was falsely accused of attempting to form a union in her plant and was trapped in an office alone for 12 hours in order to coerce her into signing a letter of resignation. She held out for those 12 hours without food, water, or access to a phone or a bathroom, and during that time she was subjected to periodic intimidation from management. Eventually she signed the letter, but once she left, she sued the company for violation of her civil rights and eventually won her case.

The video simulates what might have been seen had there been surveillance cameras where she was trapped. In creating a simulation of evidence of an event that did occur but which was made invisible by corporate interests, I offer a scenario in which to explore the treatment of the most female workforce in today's global assembly line as well as a reflection on what it means to choose to be an active rather than a passive witness. The piece comments on an abject relation to technology that is also part of the digital revolution and our willingness as global netizens to behold, respond or avoid dealing with the implications of the sitution.

Biography

Coco Fusco is a New York based interdisciplinary artist. She has performed, exhibited, lectured and curated throughout North and South America, Europe, Australia, Korea and Japan. She is the author of English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (1995) and The Bodies That Were Not Ours and Other Writings (2002). Her videos include Els Segadors (The Reapers) (2001), Pochonovela (1995) and The Couple in the Cage (1993). She is an Associate Professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts. Fusco is also co-founder and moderator of Undercurrents, an on-line discussion about feminism, new technologies and globalization.