ABSTRACT
My first encounter with Coco Fusco's work concerned a particularly acerbic debate among the New York art (and feminist) intelligentsia prompted by her challenge to the legitimacy of a cinema program which lacked any curatorial or interpretative input from those participating practitioners designated as black and ethnic “others.” Symptomatic of the more subtle, patronizing face of institutionalized racism that was to cripple “multiculturalism,” the New York event had failed to address its ideological limitations and assumptions of authority, attitudes no longer to be tolerated with silent resignation. 1 As I was to learn later, this was but one of several public confrontations over the years provoked by Fusco's incisive commentaries and live performances on the relations of power operating within the cultural and social spheres.
