Critical Writing Index

Coco Fusco: How not to Sing an Anthem

by Ana Nuño

Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Fall 2002, no. 16/17, pp. 74-77

Ana Nuño discusses Coco Fusco's performance video Els Segadors (2001). Fusco uses Catalunya's national anthem—"Els Segadors"— as a mechanism to examine the tensions that underlie the rhetoric of national identity. Recording Catalans from a range of cultural backgrounds — Spanish, Catalan, Andalusian, Pakistani, Nigerian, Dominican — singing the anthem, Fusco produces a "deconstructive parody" to highlight and explode stereotypes and ideologies that underpin issues of identity, nationalism and multi-cultural discourse.

ITEM 2002.208 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Els SegadorsCoco Fusco