Coco Fusco - Ricardo Dominguez: Dolores net.performance

[anna balint]

Announcing a forthcoming performance by Coco Fusco and Ricardo Dominguez:
Dolores from 10h to 22h
Presented by KIASMA, Helsinki, Nov. 22, 2001

Dolores from 10h to 22h is a twelve hour durational performance that  will
be broadcast live via the internet. It is based on the true story of
a  Mexican maquiladora worker who was accused on attempting to form a union
and  was locked in an office alone for twelve hours in order to coerce her
to  resign, and who subsequently sued her employer for violation of her
civil  rights.. The performance will be presented by Kiasma, Helsinki’s
Museum of  Contemporary Art, on November 22, 2001 as part of their ARS
festival. Several  other venues in Australia, Great Britain, and the United
States will be  projecting this net.performance live as a marathon movie.
The performance itself will take the form of a docu-drama, and will be
transmitted via security cameras directly onto the internet. The stylistic
result will be a cross between surveillance video and soap opera, two
televisual genres that engender viewing pleasure by positioning the
spectator in the role of all powerful voyeur with access to t he private or
secret realm of other people's lives.
The durational performance will combine the tests of physical endurance
that defined body art of the 1970s with a social commentary on the
disciplining of the female bodies of today's global assembly line workers
via application of Taylorist principles in the workplace (i.e. sociological
experiments in how to make workers more efficient). We hope to tease out a
latent connection between the scopophilic pleasure generated by
proliferating video surveillance systems and the instrumentalist reason
that informs the view of workers as an extension of machines that can be
retooled for increased productivity. In other words, while we grow
accustomed to the rhetoric celebrating digital disembodiment that evolves
within cybertheory and the burgeoning scientific discourses about the Human
Genome Project, we are being trained through the pop cultural
naturalization of surveillance to view imaging processes that dehumanize
the body as "normal" and to uncouple labor from will. The current
fascination with surveillance that runs through such television shows as
"Survivor" and the popularity of web sites such as Jennycam and Anacam
demonstrate how surveillance is being glamorized in new media culture. At
the same time the underside of this phenomenon -- i.e. the disciplining of
subjugated bodies in the global economic order -- is made to seem normal.
For this performance, Fusco will be under surveillance while she is locked
in an office under guard. Dominguez will play the maquiladora manager who
enters periodically to elicit her cooperation via intimidation. She will be
in that office with machines that she assembled but does not know how to
operate. None of her bodily needs will be attended to -- in other words,
she will not be able to leave to use a bathroom, to clean herself, or to
eat or drink. None of her emotional or social needs will be met either -
her calls to the guard will not be answered, and she will not be able to
use a telephone to notify anyone of her situation. At periodic intervals,
the guard will enter the room to attempt to coerce her to do things against
her will, such as confessing to actions she did not do, or signing papers
that frame her as guilty of having violated rules she did not violate.
Though at first she is respectful of the integrity of the machines in the
room, she will eventually attempt not to destroy them but to dismantle
them. What is not meant to be clear from this gesture is whether she seeks
to undo her work as a form of resistance, to pass time without going crazy
due to her isolation, or to learn finally about the technology that she
has  spent years putting together.
If you would like more information about this project, or if you would like
to arrange to project it at your venue please contact Sanna Rekola at
Kiasma: srekola at fng.fi.

DOLORES FROM 10h to 22H
Once upon a time in a not so faraway free trade zone at the northern edge
of Mexico, a woman who cobbled machines together for a living was accused
of trouble making at her job. Her boss locked her up in an office without
food or water or a phone. He tried over and over to cajole her into signing
a letter of resignation. He watched her to see if she would break down. She
held out for twelve hours, and later she sued the company. Her boss told
the judge that she was crazy and that it never happened. No one would claim
to have seen her.
Dolores from 10h to 22h is based on a story that no one saw.  November
22nd, you can see what happened.
Dolores from 10h to 22h is a net.performance by Coco Fusco and Ricardo
Dominguez that will be broadcast live via internet on November 22nd, 2001
from Kiasma, Helsinki’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
To view the performance live and add your comments to the chat, log on to
between 10am and 10pm (Central European Time). URL: www.kiasma.fi/ars/dolores