Last Friday, TGIF was less crowded than usual — not that students suddenly lost their taste for cheap beer. Instead of the usual drunken dancing, we squeezed into West Lecture Hall to witness interdisciplinary artist Coco Fusco speak and present video of her newest dramatic endeavor.

Fusco is famous for staging elaborate spectacles as social commentary. Two weeks ago, she orchestrated a protest performance piece in front of the U.S. Consulate in Sao Paulo where she posed as a prison guard, ordering 50 “prisoners” to scrub the street with their toothbrushes.

Her performance, titled Bare Life Study #1, was intended to be a criticism of the civil rights violations of detainees. In preparation for the study, retired U.S. military officers trained Fusco and six female students as interrogators. The video she presented as part of her lecture documented the training process.

The lecture opened by confronting the audience with photos of the recent prisoner abuse scandals of Abu Ghraib in what she termed “scenes of subjugation.” They showed prisoners forced into sexual poses and a naked man smeared with excrement in a Jesus stance.

She went on to discuss the role of women, sharing stories of female interrogators smearing fake menstrual blood on Islamic prisoners. The theatrical aspect of these photos piqued her interest. Fusco wanted to “learn about interrogation as a drama” by immersing herself in the secret theater of prison.

The video she screened documenting her experience in “training camp” was shocking in an unexpected way. As part of the training program, Fusco and her students were forced to become “prisoners of war,” signing away their civil liberties for an afternoon while the officers performed as prison guards, subjecting the students to what Fusco called “ritualized humiliation.” Prepared for a video that would be difficult to watch, I was shocked to find myself laughing.

On the tape, prison guards gave orders in phony Eastern European accents while the female graduate school students, dressed as prisoners of war, cried and screamed terribly. Even though the guards were threatening, physically mistreating and verbally abusing them in inappropriate ways, I could not empathize with the girls as victims. These rituals of degradation were so contrived that they were entertaining instead of appalling.

I did not understand why the girls were genuinely terrified, given the terms of the exercise were agreed upon beforehand. Within the first four hours of the experiment, four of the seven women gave up “key information” because they could not endure the abuse. Obviously, the tactics of interrogation proved effective.

Fusco claimed that she was not terrified at any point in the exercise because she was trying to learn from the interrogators. She even went so far as to comment that the prison guards were ridiculous enough to appear on Saturday Night Live.

I was also shocked by the eloquence and efficiency with which the prison guards demoralized the women, cleverly dispensing lines such as, “You lie to me again through alligator tears.”

Fusco claimed that these men were “respectful, intelligent and professional,” yet I wondered how such so-called “intelligent” men could become so dedicated to their outrageous roles in this exercise. Once Fusco mentioned that the guards were not singularly aggressive, but were, in fact, following protocol, I began to understand why the girls on film were so terrified.

Although Fusco is an amazing storyteller and a delightfully hilarious woman, she did not draw any conclusions about her own work. The goal of her lecture was not to preach a lesson, but to present a problem that may not have an immediate solution.

By confronting the audience with her own dramatic interpretations, members of the audience had the liberty to interpret what they saw for themselves, whatever that may be.