In 1909, before World War I, there were a number of terrorist attacks on the United States forces in the island of Mindanao in the Philippines, by Muslim extremists. General “Black Jack” Pershing was the appointed military governor of the Moro Province. He captured 50 terrorists and ordered them to be tied to posts for execution. Since all the prisoners were Muslim, he asked his men to bring two pigs and slaughter them in front of the prisoners. He then proceeded by dipping bullets into the pig’s blood.

In the process he executed 49 of the terrorists by firing squad. Then, the soldiers dug a big hole in the ground and dumped in the terrorists’ bodies and covered them in pig’s blood and viscera. The last man was set free. For 42 years there was not a single Muslim attack anywhere in the world. [...]

My interrogation technique is quite simple. I follow General Pershing’s example and order a pig to be slaughtered near the prisoner. The blood of the animal run’s freely toward the prisoner’s feet. He will immediately lift his knees to avoid making contact with it. I fill a syringe with the pig’s blood and threaten to inject him in the arm. The prisoner will talk—and quickly.

Fair? Depends on your perspective. Effective? Extremely.

In 2005, Dr. Larry Forness gave a lecture at the American Military University where he presented his views on interrogation techniques and torture in the context of a specific account of national history. In what amounts to the historicizing of extreme tactics used by the US military, Dr. Forness brings us back to the mythical first encounter between the American army and Muslim rebels in the newly colonized territory of the Philippines at the end of the 19th Century. The leaking of a transcript of his lecture to the web prompted Coco Fusco to investigate this dark moment in American history in which reality and myth collide.

In Buried Pig with Moros, Fusco restages the Forness lecture with a voice recording of the transcript and a PowerPoint presentation. The installation becomes a disembodied performance, where the absent lecturer’s voice fills the gallery-turned-classroom. In addition, Fusco’s research into this time period is assembled in a museological display. Historical artifacts relating to the Mindanao conflict are combined with other memorabilia, such as New York Times clippings, old postcards and propaganda posters, novels and textbooks chronicling the events, as well as clips from The Real Glory, a 1939 Hollywood movie starring Gary Cooper as a U.S. Army doctor in the Philippines in 1906.

While Fusco has taken on the role of interrogator in past performances, such as Operation Atropos and A Room of One’s Own, this exhibition places the viewer in the central and complicit position of witness, focusing on the assessment and construction of history at the root of the current political climate.

Coco Fusco has been active as a performance artist, author and curator since the late-1980s. Her specific areas of concern include gender-specific conflicts, migration, cultural colonization and death. She currently teaches at the School of the Arts at Columbia University. Her work has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including the current 2008 Whitney Biennial.