Coco Fusco: And the Sea will talk to you.

Cecilia Brunson Projects

September 2015

 

I felt moved and impressed by this piece of Art. It intertwined and interplayed the two stories beautifully. It illustrated the difficulties of perhaps being an ambivalent exile.Of loving one's own country but not being able to live there under any circumstances.In Fusco's case, this is Cuba, and the political/economic conditions.

And the sea will talk to you is a film set in a dark space where the audience is invited to sit in/on large inner tubes to have the experience of being in the rafts used by cubans in their attempt to emigrate to the USA.

On entering the exhibition space, I was immediately transported. The set up of Huge Black rings and the subsequent angle that the viewer had to sit in or more accurately recline within, in order to see the video, was clever. The audience, I, was completely immersed in the boat journey experience form the beginning. This was a well designed manipulative construct.

The actual filming of the sea was magical. But the real star of the show was the narrative. It held you in the palm of its hand.Switching between both stories constantly, gripped the viewer.

There was much to relate to here, much to identify with, without it being directly relevant to any individual.It was dealing with life and death. I feared for the outcome of the escape tale, the little family struggling to make it to freedom. I empathised with the woman returning her mother's ashes to her homeland for scattering.

All of this well scripted and voiced.

I left wanting to make and remake some earlier pieces of work that I had made about my own brothers death in the sea.

It is a painful piece of art.Here is someone who knows the power of narrative.