A Room of One's Own: Women and Power in the New America
September, 2006
PS122
New York, NY
January, 2007
The Feminist Future: Theory and Practice in the Visual Arts, Museum of Modern Art
New York NY
March, 2008
Whitney Biennial, Park Avenue Armory
New York, NY
Coco Fusco's A Room of One's Own: Women and Power in the New America is a performance-lecture about the expanding role of American women in the War on Terror. Fusco's persona is a female graduate of military intelligence school and a seasoned interrogator who briefs the audience on the rationales for using sexual innuendo as a tactic for extracting information from Islamic fundamentalists. The presentation stresses how a career in military intelligence represents great opportunities to emancipated women of the 21st century who have finally shed their victimhood.
According to British novelist Virginia Woolf, every woman has to have a room of her own in order to manifest her strengths. Fusco suggests that the contemporary American woman has found such a room in the military. In fact, Fusco suggests that the War on Terror offers an unprecedented opportunity for women, as the US provides the space and support women need to prove they are powerful forces in the struggle for democracy.