[music playing] -i want to thank you, judy,for doing my presentation. i have nothing to add. i want to say thankyou to radcliffe. it has been so far awonderful experience. and it has been great to bewith all the other fellows and understanding how we're allhelping in one way or another to make everything better. today, i am going to experiment.
this is a new presentation. let's see how it goes. it might be a little long. let's see. get ready. so i want to start with aquote by jacques ranciere where he talks about aesthetics. "aesthetics doesn'tdesignate the discipline dedicated to the studyof art or the beautiful.
it designates a regimeof experiences." for a long time,i've been interested in the idea of aesthetics. but maybe because myenglish is not very good, i realized one day that if youchange the h of "aesthetics," you have the word "ethics." and then i startedthinking maybe i should be doing aes-ethicswork instead of aesthetic work. then, of course, thereis a language situation.
and in spanish,it says estetica. i realized theyare very similar. so maybe if you takethe a out of it, it's est-ethics, whichmeans, "it is ethics." and this is exactly what iwould like my work as an artist to be experimentingwith and researching. is there aestheticsin the ethics? and what does that mean? john cage, many, many,many decades ago,
predicted that "ethics is theaesthetics of the future." but really, my work asan artist has always been questioning,what is art for. i never take for grantedthe function of art and what it does for people. so i want to start withthe reference, in 1917, marcel duchamp did a piececalled "the fountain" where he presented a urinaryon a pedestal in a gallery. it actually was acompetition for art.
and it was dismissedas an offensive object. but today, of course,this is the objects through which we can look atreality in an augmented way. so yes, after this piece,of course, in some way, we decided that art isa way to look at reality and a mental reality. but actually, i think itcaused also a problem. i think when it was firststarted, it was great. but now i think it hascaused a problem, which
is that from the 20th centuryuntil today, the least disputed artisticstrategy is just to remove the use value of an object. and therefore, thatbecomes automatically art. for me, this isextremely dangerous because it is, first of all,very automatic, and secondly, do not address a lot ofother issues that art can do and other things art can do. and of course, the one thingi really like about this
is that art is gesture. it's not only an object,but it is a gesture. and that's how i see art. also in 1917, there were, ofcourse, the soviet revolution. and with it, there wasexactly a different parameter for understandingart, which is art that will be like akind of [inaudible] pop or a propaganda toolfor the government. but at the same time, itcreated the possibility
to have a verydistinctive relationship with the function of art. one, while the urinary wasbringing the life inside of the museum, forexample, the cinema train that they had was bringingart out into people's life. i think this is a--it kind of parallels the binary situationthat happens very often in the discussionin the art world, where people arelike no, no, no,
artists should belooking at something. or art is a way by which youjust are aware of something, you look at something. but there is another group ofpeople, or another tendency, where people want to useart for something else. of course, whathappened in those very heated discussionsis one group told the other thatthat kind of work is not good because it'stoo market oriented.
and the other group sayto the other group, yeah, but yours is just propaganda. so in a way, i am veryrelated to this discussion. and this is part ofmy recent research. and also, i'm very relatedwith the ideas of utopia. for me, as a cuban artistcoming out of a revolution, utopia is not somethingthat will never be achieved, but is actually somethingthat you construct. and of course, here wehave-- i want to show you
the context in which mywork has been influenced. here, he says "to fight forsomething that is impossible and to conquer it." that's the kind of ideologythat i was growing up with. of course, later, yourealize it's all crap. but in the moment, you'reyoung and listening too much. and of course, one thingthat was very interesting is that in that time in cuba,we were extremely related in a very-- theycall it [spanish].
so we were very internationalwith the different causes. and we even think, atthe time, that religion is another tool for fight. of course, theartists were supposed to be the warriors for thisideology and art a tool. so politics in cuba has beenalways used as affect, as fear. it's very importantthe way we always understand in cuba,politics through emotions. but what i meanto say in my work
is to see if we cantransform affect into political effectiveness. so i want to show youdifferent examples of my work. and in between,i'm going to show you more than whatthe work is about, the overall methodologyof work that i've been trying to create. so i started in 1985 aseries of works called homage to ana mendieta.
and what i did was very basic. i just reproduced allthe work of ana mendieta when i learned that shedied and that we will never meet in person. so i decided to just doexactly the same performances for 10 years. of course, this bringa lot of interest. i discovered through thispiece a lot of things that i actually after havebeen continual investigation
in my work, whichis, for example, the ideas of authorship. the fact that a lotof people are like, but this is not your work. it's somebody else's work. so i was always claimingthat my work was a gesture to try to rescue another artistfrom their cultural memory of a country whereactually people who left were erased from the history.
so what happened isthat in the process, i learned that evenwhen you try to do something personal and an homagein the context of cuba, which is highly politicallycharged, the work will always have a political implication. so in a way, i was,ok, i can escape it, so let's get into it. another example ofthings i'm interested in is this piece where it'scalled destierro, displacement.
and it is an nkisinkonde icon, african icon that is used usually tovenerate by the people. and also, you can useit to ask for something. and if you don't give the iconwhat you promised in return, they might go afteryou and do some harm. here, i did the performanceon fidel castro's birthday, by chance, in cuba. and of course, the workwas about this idea of all the promisesthat have been
made, all the social promisesthat had not been accomplished. what i learned throughdoing this piece and what i was tryingto do is, how can i do art that speaks to everybody. how can i do art, not onlybecause it's in the street and outside the museum,but has a language that can be understood by most people? because the issues thati'm talking about are issues that concern everybody.
and in between thesepeople i want to talk to, i also want to talkto people in power. i also want to talkto politicians. so something very weird happenedwhen i doing this performance. because it was fidel castro'sbirthday, a lot of police came to see what's going on. why are people spontaneouslyhaving like a demonstration style, following this person? and a kid say, no, no,this is an artwork.
and the police, who wasnot trained probably for such a situation,thinks, ok, then it's fine. continue. proceed. so i think that was a momentof big realization for me because they say, oh, soif this is art, is this ok. and i decided that iwant to work with that. therefore, after that, ihave used the context of art and the privileges, let'ssay, that art gives you,
to say things that inanother way, i cannot say, almost asked, is art thelanguage of the citizens in places wherethey cannot speak? but also, something happened. i think i realizedthat if i want to talk to peoplewho are in power positions like that police,maybe the symbolic strategy will not work anymore. and then i decided iwanted to change symbolism
for direct experience. another piece i did in '93and '94 was a newspaper. of course, in cuba, even today,printed newspaper is forbidden. it's illegal. but of course, i'musing art, right? so i did the newspaper. it didn't go that well. but i had my firstinterrogation by police. but one thing i wasvery interested at
is the fact that i wastrying to use the strategy of hyper-realism to do art. what i mean by thatis i wanted the work not to be like anewspaper, but look like a newspaper,circulated like a newspaper, being experiencedas a newspaper. so i really wanted thedistance between representation and presentation tobe completely crashed. so the other thingi did is i realized
that if i want to talk to powerand if i want to talk to people who make decision-making, iwill appropriate the resources of power to do my work. so from this moment on,the materials of my work would not be any morelike, oh, an icon from-- some representation. it will be a newspaper, aschool, a political speech, and so on. so i'm going to appropriatethe ways power talks
to do my own work. and also, of course, i realizedthat my work, in general, is a test to propaganda. what i do is i don't say, whatyou're saying is not true. my attitude, my performativityis, i believe you completely. and i'm going to behave asif the propaganda was real. and then, of course, you realizethat everything is not real. and this is whenthe work happens. another aspect of mywork is the performance.
i studied performance. and this is a piece i didwhere i get with a friend. his name is jota castro. no political work. it was just a coincidence. we got together. and we decided tosign a contract where the first ofthe two who died will give the body to theother to do a performance.
[laughter] we don't want todo the piece soon. we're trying to-- but one thing happenedin this piece. the first thing is i realizedthat as a performance artist, i didn't want to work anymorewith the limits of the body. i didn't want to knowif i can be-- which i did-- hanging for whateverhours in the ceiling or cutting myself and seehow much blood i can--
i was not interested inthat because the reason was, not because it's not alegitimate art practice, because i realized inthe political context, it is very easyto people in power to say, oh, that's herpsychological damage, whatever, artwork she needs to do. and i was like, no,it's not about me. it's about us. so i realized that i neededto get away from that
and start working thelimits of society. and then, ofcourse, i say, ok, i don't do performanceart anymore. i don't want to belongto that tradition. i want to belong toarte de conducta, which is a name i came up with. and it means art thatis using social behavior as artistic material. and of course,another thing that
happened with this piecethat was very interesting is that when we told peopleabout it, people were like, but what is the art. is the art the ideathe artist had? is the art the actualpaper, like the document that you have? or is the art not yet there? and you're going to do it ina few years when you died? i never answeredthose questions.
but i'm veryinterested in the fact that i want my projects tobe a moment in which people don't take for granted theirartistic condition of it. why? because i think that way, peoplecan relate even more to it. another thing is that when youstart being a political artist, there are a lot ofthings that happen. and one of them isyou realize you want to look for sustainable change.
you don't want to justcomplain and use art to say things you canread in the newspaper or on the internet. you want to use allthe tools that art has to change something. but you understand very quicklythat the changes you can do as an artist is very small. it can be mostlylike a small example to maybe excite somebodyelse do something else.
so i understood thati needed to look for ways by which thatchange could be sustainable. in this case, iwas invited to be part of a group ofexperts to do repertoire on the field of culturalrights for the first artistic freedom of expression andcultural rights document that was actually signed andvoted by the un members. that's another story, whathappened with those things in the un.
but at the moment,i was very excited. ok. so in my work, i haveseveral guidelines. one is that i work withthe political imaginary. what i mean bythat is that i like to work with what peopleimagine places are. for example, this is a piece idid in cuba in the year 2000. the year 2000 was veryimportant because we were always promised that by the year2000, it'll be all perfect.
everything will be perfect. and we'll be incommunism and so on. and then the year 2000 arrives. and we were like, uh-huh. and then i did this piece,which was completely dark-- this is only for you to seethe elements-- completely dark with this sugarcane. and then you enter. and you see a littlevideo of fidel
opening his militaryvest to show that he has no bullet-proof. but for the piece, whatthe piece was saying is that the real vulnerablepeople is not the person on tv. it's the people whoare there taking care of the person on tv. so you had this naked cubanpeople who were passing, the audience who waspassing through it. another thing i'minterested in terms
of the strategy of my workis i don't work with actors, or i don't train peopleto look like something. i always work with people,professional experience. an example is this piece i didwith bernardine dohrn and bill ayers, the members ofweather underground, who actually now areprofessors, legit professors, of university. and in this piece, i asked them. it was at the very month, ithink, where obama was elected.
and i said, what do we dowhen the person you are in the same ideas is elected? no? so you are notopposition anymore. and they start talking. right? and they're very good speakers. and then, of course, i hadplanted-- like politicians do, i had planted peoplein the audience
to interrupt them all the time. so what happened isthey couldn't speak. there was no way they can speak. i have to say, afteri did this piece, i'm always afraid that somebodywill do that to me too. but it's fine. so i wanted tocreate this situation where you lose thepower that is given in this position where you are.
another example is the horses. this is calledtatlin's whisper #5. and what i did is talkto the mounted police. and i say, can you use thecrowd control technique in the audienceof the exhibition? what was veryinteresting in this piece was that-- one sideof it is that i wanted to take thingsthat aren't on tv, that you don't experienceyourself, and bring it
to real life. so maybe next time you see it,you will know how to react. you have tested yourselfin certain situations. the sadness of this is howquickly people follow orders. and i have to say that nobodyknew this was an art piece. the artwork was not announced. my name was notanywhere in the museum. so that just happenedthat they just arrived. and it was a surprise.
another thing i workwith is political memory, which you also would besurprised how quickly it goes, it fades. so this is a piecei did in russia. of course, you couldsee through a peephole. or you could enter. you, always in mywork, have the option to participate or justmiss it, let's say. so what i did for this is i hadthere were these photographers
in revolution square,red square taking photos of these very cute animalsdressed like people, not to miss the irony of markets. and what i did is i said,come to the exhibition. and we were going to take familypictures with these animals. so in a way, kind ofthe way politicians do is very spectacular. so you see only whatthey want you to see. they give you thephoto right there.
and then this isa family portrait. what they discoverafter the photo is given is this is the photo of theperson who created the kgb. so their family portraitis taken with the kgb. it was interestingthat a lot of people did not know whothat person was. they thought it was justa random, heroic photo. only two people decidednot to have the photo taken when they saw the image.
also, because i'm acuban artist and i did a lot of my workinside cuba, but then i started to be invited outside. i had to rethink whatdoes it mean to do the work in other contexts. so i was invited to redothis piece in germany, but differently. the creators said, do thesame piece, but differently. i said, whoa, how can i doa piece about the perception
of a place? so i decided to go andwork with the history. of course, when you saygermany, back then-- now, maybe it's refugees. but back then, it wasabout the nazi history. so i went back. and i decided toput a lot of lights. so actually, youdon't see anything. and there was the sound ofpeople marching and cocking
a gun. what is interesting is if youare in the right position, you realize thatthese are not sounds, but these are actual peoplewith actual guns in the space. and of course, it is ametaphor of how power always serves you better, thatyou can observe them. then, of course, anotherthing i do, or i hope to do, is see if i can integrateart into people's everyday political life.
this is one of thereasons i go so often outside of art institutions. this is a project i did inmexico during the election, the last election. and one thing wasinteresting, the research, that while everyelection in mexico talks about immigrationissues, they do not talk in terms ofthe people they receive. but they talk about themexicans who are left,
who are here inthe united states. and what we didwith this project is to find the elements ofdemand of these immigrants who arrived to mexicoand are treated even worse than the mexicansare treated here, ironically. and we wanted that toappear for the first time in the public debateof the candidates. so that means i wastalking nonstop, forever, in every newspaperand everything
because we were trying toput the message across. and of course, we dida lot of research. but for the first timein the last debate, not exactly how wesaid, but very similar. the candidate that was goingto lose because everybody knew he was in the last--said and talked for the first timein a mexican election about the situation ofimmigrants in mexico. some of the ways by which wemade this completely public
was also to rescue a traditionin mexico and latin america in general, which is losvoceros, the voice people, meaning the people whoshout the news when you buy the newspaper. so we had 100 of them walkingthe most important streets of mexico, next tothe palace of congress and the presidentialpalace, to shout the rights for immigrants. but i think i wanted thedocumentation of this piece
not to be a talk or a photo. but i wanted to embed thisproject in the actual system, electoral system, in mexico. so what we did isevery six years there is a little momentwhere people can actually propose a new party. and we are number45 in the list. unfortunately, artinstitutions do not always have the capacity tocontinue these projects.
so i had to stop. but at least wearrived so far as that. so as you can see,a lot of my work is a collective production,is a collective construction. so in a way, i cannot sayi'm an artist and claim sole authorship of everything. so i have come up withthis idea of initiator. so basically, whati do with my work is i createconditions for people
to behave sociallyin different ways. so i have to give half ofthe credit to the audience. in this case, i put the podiumlike this one inside an art institution and told people theycould say whatever they wanted for one minute, ofcourse, without offending anybody or calling to violence. and it was kind ofa reconstruction of the first speechfidel gave where there was a big myth becauseall these doves were in him.
and for 50 years,people were like, do you think that'sa sign of god, or do you thinkthat was strained? so i decided tosolve this solution by training doves and havingthat guy putting it on people. but for me, it wasvery interesting because it was thefirst time a lot of that people could seethemselves in the leadership position in cuba.
but of course, i alwayssay i'm a political artist. so if i'm an initiator, icannot call myself anything else but political initiator. also, the work i dois very different. i mean, the impactthat you can have on people in a 45-minuteperformance in a museum doesn't work sometimes whenyou want to do other changes. so i have come up withtwo ways of working. one is short-term projects,the one that works for the art
exhibition demands, let's say,and the long-term projects. these projects can take froma few months to 10 years. and these areprojects that i want to believe and want to test ifi can change something socially. and therefore, you have to workin the temporality of society, not the temporality of the quickpeople in the arts exhibition having drinks. so how do i do this? i do autocritica instituciona.
for the socialists, thismight mean something because we had self-criticismin the meetings in cuba. so i wanted theinstitution to do the same. so institutionsof self-critique. what it means is thatinstead of me criticizing what exists, what thegovernment has done or an institutionhas done, what i do is i create myown institution, my own institutionwith the ways i
hope i will like for itto function in reality. so this is kind of, again, away to also say that things are possible becauseat least in cuba, a lot of justificationis that you cannot do it. ok, i'm a singleartist with no budget . and i did it. how can you, as agovernment, cannot do it? so it's a very clearway to show them that. it's a lot of trouble.
but it is worth it. so in this case, icreated am art school, an alternative artschool to study political andsocial performances and to redirect theconversation about what is art for and for whom. so we wanted to create workfor the people in a moment where the cuban governmentwas using the art market to derailthe conversation
to social responsibilityfor artists and just acquire some moneyand some houses and be quiet. so i wanted to rescuethis conversation that at the moment, lookedvery [inaudible]. but we proceed, and we did it. so this is some of theworks also of the students. this is a machine forthe fidel you want. and i did all theother pieces like, for example, immigrantmovement international where
i wanted to talk aboutthe political condition of immigrants, which isthe first condition that is lost when you cross a border. and this is the other thing. all of these projectslook almost exactly as the real projects. i don't want to makesomething weird. i want to make somethingthat people feel comfortable and make an easy entranceto this process instead
of the being, oh, this artand i don't understand it. no, no, this is justa store front for you. and then once you enter,let's have a conversation. so in this case,we did something that looks very much likea grassroots organization. and i'm very proud of this. we did the migrant manifesto. and why i'm proud of this isbecause for the first time, i guess-- i don't know.
but we put togetherpeople like saskia sassen, like a reporter from the unon immigration with the mom next door who has a sixthgrade education together with this guy who is one of theexperts in the united states about the economy of immigrants,all of these people together. and together, we generatedthis migrant manifesto. of course, the pin. we also created a pin. so actually, duringthis piece, we
realized thatevery time you talk about the law with immigration,people get freaked out. so i said, ok, let'sleave that aside. and let's just respectimmigrants first. so we did this campaignthat-- if you want one, i can give you one. and we actually didinternational gatherings. we also did postcardsfor immigrants to send their friends.
we did alsobillboards for europe when we were invitedto festivals. and a flag, we made a flag. here it is with the text. but the flag isjust the drawing. and of course, immigrantmovement international is not only the work thathas been done in queens. but it is also every time weare addressing immigrant issues because it's happening thesame everywhere and forever.
like after 15 yearsworking on this, we have the same problems,the same unanswered questions, and the same racismand discrimination towards immigrants. so i did this campaign, apolitical campaign called dignity has no nationality. it was a postcard. so you sign the postcard. and actually, it is project wheni asked pope francis to please
give vatican city citizenship toall immigrants in the world who have no papers. if somebody hasa contact, let me know because i'm trying tobring him all the postcards, around 20,000. another thing i do iswhat i said before, behavior art or conduct art. and the reason for that isbecause in spanish, "conducta" means the behavior, butit also means something
that travels from one place toanother, the conductor of one. so i want art tobe that as well. and this is an example of apiece i did of behavior art where i wanted to work withthe reaction of people. in colombia-- of course,you say colombia, and you first think "drug." now, you think peace. i'm glad my work is gettingdated for better reasons. but in this case,i came to colombia.
and we did a very boringpanel with all the actors of the colombiansituation, like a family of a missing person of the[inaudible] leadership, so a farc person anda paramilitary person. and people were like,this is so boring. we know this. what is this artist coming todo this-- and then five minutes or so into it, a personwith a tray of real cocaine was passing through theaudience of the event.
of course, that is behaviorart because what happened after that was the peace. so a big discussion, and yeah. so another aspect ofmy work is what i call political-timing specificity. it means that i'm not alwaysconscious of the place and the people. but also, what is thepolitical state of the place? what are the actors?
what are the laws? what are the discussion,the political emotions that we have at that moment? and in this case, i did onepiece that is called yo tambien exijo, i also demand. and for this piece--this is not egocentric, but i self-cited myself, quotedmyself with another piece. so i took the pieceof the microphones and i said, i'mgoing to do it again.
but instead of the safetyof an art institution, i'm going to do it in therevolution square, which is the place wherepower has the power. and of course, itdidn't very well at all. many things happened. i was detained, interrogated,and so on and so on. but i think thework was a success because it showed the wayin which power operates. it showed to everybody.
and i talked topeople in the left and also people insocial justice groups. and this is a veryhard conversation when you talk about cubabecause these people do not want to see the new cuba. they're still thinkingabout the cuba from the '70s who wasgood to angela davies, who was good to angola. this is not anymore thecuba you have today.
and it's very hard for meto have this conversation. so i'm very happy thatthrough this work, i could have some ofthat conversation. right now, i thinkthe excitement-- which i am in favor ofthe relation of cuba-us. and obama was amazingwhen he was there. i always say that hewas not a president. he talked to cubans asa community organizer. and that was the mostbeautiful thing to see there.
so what happenedwith this piece is in the midst of all of thistension that lasted eight months, i was extremelysatisfied that in a way, government performed for me. so after being somany years trying to talk to power, to havea dialogue with them, they finally talked back. unfortunately, theway they talked back was that during myreading of hannah arendt's
the origins of totalitarianismwith the speakers to the street so every cuban could hearit in spanish, of course. they sent a brigade ofjackhammers for the street in front of my house. they were alreadyfixing old havana. but my house was far from whereit was supposed to happen. and i even talked to a guy. i said, this is no good. this is not-- it's going tobe-- no, they are orders.
i say, ok, ordershave to be done. so of course, ithink for me what you see today is afracture of cubans hope for change, not forinstitutional, economic change or americans going inand traveling there, but for their own personalachievement of change. but what i want to do isi want to use art again to try to see if we canstart a new dialogue. i don't want to talk aboutwhat happens in cuba five,
10 years from now when allthe decisions are made, where all the contracts aremade with the big corporations, and nobody can changeanything for real. now, there is a momentof a lot of instability. so maybe one voiceof a person can change a deal that'sgoing to be made that would not help the cubans. so what i want to do is iwant to start an institute. we are already working on theinstitute artivism, hannah
arendt. and what we based this is onthe fact that yes, in cuba in the '60s, we hada literacy campaign that i'm very proud of wherealmost everybody in cuba learned how to write and read. the problem is you cannotread what you want. and you cannot saywhat you think. so what i wantwith the team-- we are a group of people working.
and how can we bring a civicrights literacy campaign to cuba so people learn notonly their rights, but how can they defend that and theyidentify when they are not being respected. of course, very quicklysay, three of the elements-- we're going use a wish tank. we want to see what people want. we want to do think tanks, wherewe bring people from hopefully all over the place, experts tomeet with them the same way we
did with theimmigrant manifesto, to bring ideas ofwhat in the world have been done inthis same situations. and hopefully, do tankwill be the way which we're going to show this in thestreet or to all the people. it's very tough. but we're going to do it. so of course, asyou can see, by now i'm trying to talk in my workabout what are the uses of art.
can art be a tool? can art be a toolfor social change? can art be a toolfor empowerment? and of course, we alsoneed to think, not only what are the usesof art, but what are the uses of art institutionstoday and rethink that. my answer to that isgoing back to the urinary.
ethical issues in 3d printing,and my proposal is there is timeto put dechamp's urinal back into the restroom and use it.
thank you very much. [applause]
