"Couple in a Cage"

               Diana Taylor's piece on A Savage Performance: Guillermo 'omez-Pena and Coco Fusco's "Couple in a Cage" examines Pena and Fusco's recreation of colonialism in contemporary time. "Couple in a Cage" was performed in the early 1990's and traveled the world exhibiting Pena and Fusco while incorporating the very real theme of "other". Taylor discusses that for many centuries, "The 'primitive' body as object reaffirms the cultural supremacy and authority of viewing the subject-the one who sees, interprets, and records from the divine Columbus to the ethnographer... The objectified, 'primitive' body exists,  isolated and removed" (p. 163).  Taylor also examines that the 'encounters' with the 'other' and breaks it down by stating that the only way society understands 'discovery' is through the eyes of the 'explorer'. This automatically is a separation between us and them.
               I like Pena and Fusco's performance because it scrutinizes the barbaric American history that has been taught for the last couple of centuries. From their avoidance of eye contact, the use of collars and leashes to be worn for when the artists needed to use the bathroom, as well as using an unintelligible, their performance eroticized and sexualized a fable. Through their exploitation of 'other' it seemed to open a dialogue and (hopefully) helped bring to question how history has been written i.e. the discoverers vs. discover-ees.