Film Screening: The Couple in the Cage (1993)

Join us on Friday, 12 December for The Couple in the Cage, a short film (31 minutes) that documents the traveling performance of Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco, in which they exhibited themselves as caged Amerindians from an imaginary island. While the artists’ intent was to create a satirical commentary on the notion of discovery and exhibiting humans, they soon realized that many of their viewers believed the fiction, and thought the artists were real “savages”. The record of their interactions with audiences in four countries dramatizes the dilemma of cross-cultural misunderstanding we continue to live with today. Their experiences are interwoven with archival footage of ethnographic displays from the past, giving an historical dimension to the artists’ social experiment. The Couple in the Cage is a powerful blend  of comic fiction and poignant reflection on the morality of treating  human beings as exotic curiosities.   

The film and the topic of exhibiting living human beings will be introduced by Vika Kakhidze, Student at Central European University’s Department of Political Science. The discussion will be moderated by Maria Kronfeldner, Professor at Central European University's Department of Philosophy.

This screening is supported by the Knowledge in Crisis project, a Cluster of Excellence supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF).