Coco Fusco, Operation Atropos, 2006
Coco Fusco
Operation Atropos

Coco Fusco (*1960, USA) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist and writer. Fusco’s work combines electronic media and performance in a variety of formats – from staged multi-media performances incorporating large scale projections and closed circuit television to live performances streamed to the internet that invite audiences to chart the course of action through chat interaction. Her work is an ongoing reflection on the condition of (women’s) bodies in globalising and technologically imbued environments. Her video entitled La Plaza Vacia (The Empty Plaza, 2012), was shot in the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. It is a meditation on the legendary Cuban site as a stage devoid of human presence but filled with memories of past political performances. Later work focussed on German colonialism in West-Africa. Text: Coco Fusco

artist's website: www.cocofusco.com

Operation Atropos is a documentary about interrogation and POW resistance training. Director Coco Fusco worked with retired U.S. Army interrogators who subjected her group of women students to immersive simulations of POW experiences in order to show them what hostile interrogations can be like and how members of the U.S. military are taught to resist them. The group of interrogators is called Team Delta, and they regularly offer intensive courses that they call “Authentic Military Experiences” to civilians. The documentary includes interviews with the interrogators, shedding light on how they read personalities, how they evaluate the reliability of the person being interrogated, and how they use the imposition of physical and mental stress strategically. More fundamentally, however, the film shows how interrogators rationalise what they do and how they imagine both themselves and their enemies.
Text: Video Data Bank

Courtesy Video Data Bank, Chicago

Format
video, colour, sound, 59:00min

Issue date
2006

Tags
conflict, military, pain, torture, violence