This is the sixth piece of the series Tatlin's Whisper which examines the relationship between apathy and anaesthetization of the images in the mass media. This series intends to activate images, well-known because of having been repeatedly seen in the press, but are here decontextualized from the original event that gave way to the news and staged as realistically as possible in an art institution. The most important element in this series is the participation of spectators who may determine the course the piece will take. The idea is that next time spectators face a piece of news using similar images to those they experienced, they may feel an individual empathy with that distant event towards which they will normally have an attitude of emotional disconnection or informative saturation. The experience of the audience within the piece may allow them to understand information in a different way and appropriate it because of having lived through it.

 

On the other hand, the title of the series, Tatlin's Whisper, evokes the present weakening of the impact a moment of Western history in which great transformations took place as the result of social revolutions originally had. A symbolic reference is made to Russian artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, who created the Tower Monument, foreseen as the seat for the Third Communist International, an icon of the enthusiasm and grandiosity of the Bolshevik Revolution. The intensity, credibility and exaltation of socialist revolutions, just as Tatlin's Tower, which was never built, were frustrated and utopia is rethought with the effort implied in a weak whisper. This series reevaluates the desire for moments of active citizenry commiment in the construction of a political reality, while ideologies transform and circulate today as pieces of news.

Tatlin’s Whisper # 6 (Havana Version) was held in the central patio of the Wifredo Lam Center, the institution in charge of organizing and holding the Havana Biennials.

 

The audience was handed two hundred disposable cameras with flash to document the performance and told that they could freely express their thoughts for a minute through the microphone in the podium. There was a long silence. The first person took the podium guarded by two persons in military uniform (a woman and a man). They put a white dove on the speaker’s shoulder, an allusion to the emblematic image of Fidel Castro when delivering his first speech on January 8th in Havana after the Triumph of the Revolution, an image that ratified his absolute leadership in a generalized consensus which worked for those who wanted to see in this image either the peace guaranteed in the lives of the citizens, the Messiah or the aesthetics of the future to be built.

 

In Tatlin’s Whisper # 6 (Havana version) there is no censorship during the minute a member of the audience is at the mike. When the time assigned for freedom of expression ends, the persons in military uniform that until then had been at each side of the speakers – to defend their right to talk or to control it – take the dove from their shoulder making them leave the podium and the dais and they become once more part of the audience. This action was repeated with each speaker. They were all treated in the same way. A total of 39 persons made use of the mike to express their affinity with the Cuban political system or criticize it in the 41 minutes the work lasted, after which Tania Brugera took the podium to thank the Cubans for their courage and their exercise of freedom of expression.

 

Several reactions were exhibited, all with respect and all accepted, those who offered reasons to continue the path of Fidel Castro’s Revolution and those who asked for elections with nobody in that family as a candidate. It went from a person whose only reaction was to cry because she had had no other option than migrating because of her political differences, to declarations of members of the blogger movement in Cuba who have contributed when dissenting in virtual public spaces in the net. Some demanded those who were part of the secret police to come to the mike, others asked for a day when freedom of speech did not have to be a performance.

 

The loudspeakers within and without the building made more than one of those not involved in the Havana Biennial approach as spectators.

 

The work functions like a projection for the future when people use this chance to express THROUGH A MIKE and as a monument when the empty podium is an image reminding us of the absence of the leader who for 49 years (1959-2008 1) led the life of the Cuban people.

 

While the cameras with flash made documentation in real time they were also a protection device for those who had taken the floor. This piece yields to the audience responsibility, authorship and the ownership of its docum entation

 

The impact of this piece made the Organizing Committee of the Tenth Biennial issue a denunciation against the comments of the participants branding their authors as manipulators of the artistic event with the purpose of expressing their political platforms and discrediting the Cuban Revolution. On the other hand, rumors on the performance swept the city and reached sectors of the population that did not belong to the artistic elite, disseminating the event in the media abroad, mainly through Miami TV stations 2 that Cubans inside the country can see through popular – and illegal – access to cable TV. The following day some people visited the place to see if the mikes were still open; the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White, a pacifist group claiming for the release from prison of their husbands, political prisoners in Cuba) were among them. The emergence in the following months of performance strategies by art groups and bloggers who took the streets with demands or spoke to audiences denied to them is attributed to this piece.

 

The piece, endowed with an acute political impact, was conceived as an open structure press ing the limits of the institutions in power, where the responsibility rests with the audience that, to participate, must assume their role as citizens actively integrated to the political process. The privilege of expression, with limitations, artists have in Cuba is transferred to spectators who enjoy a sort of momentary democracy, almost as a rehearsal of what a plural society tolerating discrepancy as part of a project for civil society would be.

 

This piece, with its situationist and hyperrealist notions, can go beyond representation spaces to work directly in and with reality.

 

 

 

¹ The year when Fidel Castro fell ill and was relegated to a life with less public presence was 2006, but it was on February 19, 2008 that Granma newspaper, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party, published a note where the leader expressed: “I will not aspire to or accept – I repeat – I will not aspire to or accept the position as President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief.” He was referring to the elections that were to be held five days later at the People’s Power Assembly where power was officially transferred to his brother Raul.

² See Documentation's Tab

 

2012
	Crisisss. América Latina.  Arte y Confrontación, 1919 - 2010.  Itinerant Exhibition.  Curated by Gerardo Mosquera. (Documentation)
	.   Museo Arocena. Torreón, México. November 15, 2011 - February 15
2011
	Crisisss. América Latina.  Arte y Confrontación, 1919 - 2010.  Itinerant Exhibition. Curated by Gerardo Mosquera. (Documentation)
	.   Museo de Arte del Banco de la República. Bogotá, Colombia / Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín. Colombia. July 10 - October 30   .   Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes. Mexico March 9 - June 11
	Unresolved Circumstances: Video Art from Latin America. MOLAA Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California, United States. Curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Idurre Alonso (Documentation) June 5 - August 28
	It is it_. Espacio 1414.  Santurce, Porto Rico.  Curated by María Inés Rodríguez. (Installation with performative elements -no activated-) January 26, 2010 - June 1
2010
	Tatlin Whisper #6 (Havana version). Le peuple qui manque present: Que faire? art, film, politique. Pompidou Center, Small room, Floor -1. Curated by Kantuta Quirós and Aliocha Imhoff. (Screening in V.O. with french subtitles) December 18
	Tania Bruguera: On the political Imaginary (Survey Show). Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York. Purchase New York, United States. (catalog) Curated by Helaine Posner. (Documentation) January 28 - April 11
2009
	Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (version for Havana) -Integración y resis tencia en la era global-, Tenth Havana Biennial. Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam. Havana, Cuba. March 29

Scrolldown for INTEGRAL VERSION (english subtitles), first upload in Youtube and REFERENCE video

 

Scrolldown for REFERENCE, EXHIBITION'S DOCUMENTATION and AUDIENCE'S Images

 

Scrolldown for PERFORMANCE'S TRANSCRIPTION 

 

Scrolldown for Miami TV stations that Cubans inside the country can see through popular –and illegal– access to cable TV.

 

 

Integral Video Version of Tatlin's Whisper #6 (Havana version)

 

 

Youtube's original video

 

 

 

"...I think this is a decisive moment in our history..."  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Castro speaking on the night of his arrival Havana after winning revolution. January 8, 1959

Ciudad Libertad (Columbia Military Camp) Havana, Cuba

photos: Anonymous

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crisisss. América Latina. Arte y Confrontación, 1919 - 2010. Curated by Gerardo Mosquera.
Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes. Mexico. (Video Documentation)
photo: Sandra Ramos

 

It is it_. Curated by María Inés Rodríguez.
Espacio 1414. Santurce, Puerto Rico. (Installation with performative elements -no activated-)
photo: Agustina Ferreyra for Berezdivin Collection

 

 

Tania Bruguera: On the political Imaginary (Survey Show). Curated by Helaine Posner.

Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College. New York, United States. (Installation with performative elements -no activated-)

photo: Jim Frank

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Central Patio of the Wifredo Lam Center. March 29, 2009

Havana, Cuba

photos: Audience

 

 

 

 

Download Performance's Transcription

 

 

 

 

Selected Miami TV stations

 

 

(by chronological and alphabetical order)

 

2010

Abraham, Harlan."Little Brother: Raúl Cstro and the New Cuban Revolution," Swing Vote Magazine, United States.  April, 2010, p.7 (illust.)

 

Artinfo. "Cuba Opens to the Art World," Artinfo.  United States, March, 2010

 

Díaz Bringas, Tamara. "Cuba, Flying Machines and Trojan Horses," Tercer Texto Nr.1 (Third Text, Nr.20), 2010.

 

Furukawa, Minami."The Performances of Tania Bruguera," Chicago Art Magazine, Chicago, United States. June 30, 2010 (illust.) 

 

Hasler, Adam."Tania Bruguera, Cuba, Performance, Politics," Provisions.  Washington DC, United States. December 2, 2010

 

Hernández Díaz, Daniel. "Sobre la Declaración del Comité Organizador de la Décima Bienal de La Habana," Kaosenlared. Terrassa, Barcelona

 

Quiles, Daniel. “The Artist is Absent: notes on Tania Bruguera," Arte al Día International, No. 132, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010 (illust.) pp. 42 - 47. ISNN 13 - 7447093153932

 

Rubin, Edward. "Tania Bruguera," Art Nexus, Issue 77, Jan. - August. 2010 (illust.) pp. 110 - 111. 

___________________. "Neuberger Museum Features Installation Art by Cuban Artist; Tania Bruguera: On the Political Imaginary". D'Art International Magazine. Fall/Winter Issue. (illust.) pp. 1 - 3.

___________________. "Neuberger Museum Features Installation Art by Cuban Artist; Tania Bruguera: On the Political Imaginary". March 29. ARTES eMagazine, United States.

 

Sánchez, Yoani. "Tania Bruguera, an Extraordinary Cuban Artist," Huffington Post, World Section. United States, December 21, 2010

 

 

2009

Bishop, Claire.“Speech Disorder: Claire Bishop on Tania Bruguera at the 10th Havana Biennial”, Artforum, Summer 2009 (illust.) pp. 121 - 122

 

Brown, Ricardo. "El 'Performance' de Tania Bruguera," Ricardo Brown's Blog.  United States, April 11, 2009 (video)

 

Cadelo, Claudia. "Un minuto de libertad por persona," Octavio Cerco Blog, March 30, 2009.  Havana, Cuba (illust.) -(Download English version)-

_______________. "Cut off from the 'culture'," Octavio Cerco Blog, July 24, 2009.  Havana, Cuba (illust.)

 

Cipitelli, Lucrezia. "Cuba e democrazia. L'ultimo lavoro di Tania Bruguera," AMI Agenzia Multimediale Italia, March 31, Italy (illust.)

 

Corry, Frances. "Oh, Behave. Tania Bruguera on behaviour art and breaking the rules," The Eye, weekly arts magazine of The Columbia Daily Spectator, vol.9, issue 11. December 9th, 2010, New York, United States.

 

Curía, Dolores. "Ethics of provocation: Tania Bruguera turn spectators into citizens," August, 2009. Buenos Aires, Argentina (illust.)

 

Flash Art. "Castro condemns the "propagandistic anti-Cuban machinery" of performance at 10th Havana Biennial," Flash art online. March, 2009.

Harum, Marcio. "Arte sem embargo," Trópico, idéias de Noete e Sul.  Brazil, May 25, 2009

 

Ichikawa, Emilio. "Del 'susurro de Tatlin' a 'la voz de Bruguera". Emilioichikawa Blog, April 2, 2009

 

Israel, Esteban. "Cuba accuses blogger Yoani Sánchez of 'provocation'," Reuters, Edition U.S., editing by Jeff Franks and Jackie Frank, April 1, 2009. United States (illust.)

 

Flores D'Arcais, Alberto. "Cuba, blogger sul palco per un grido di libertà" La Reppublica, Division Stampa Nazionale - Gruppo Editorial L'Espresso, March, 31, 2009.  Italia (illust.)

 

García, Joel. "Performance: 'El Congreso que Cuba necesita'," Cuba Out.  Havana, Cuba. April 13, 2009

 

Goldberg, Michael. "The Force of Desire/The Force of Necessity: Cultural Exchange in the Bienal de la Habana," Michael Golberg's Blog. Sydney, Australia. June, 2009

 

Gómez Peña. "Cuando el público determina el destino final de la obra de arte," Esfera Pública Blog. Colombia, April, 23, 2009 / Contraindicaciones. April, 21 (Gómez Peña's video)

 

Grandi, Alessandro. "Cuba, Biennale Spot per la Democrazia," Oltre il Muro Blog. Italia, April 6, 2009

 

Helguera, Pablo. "Lessons from Havana," Art World Salon. New York, United States, April 9, 2009

 

Herzberg, Julia P. "Integración en la Era Global: Reflexiones Personales," Buenos Aires, Argentina. September 25, 2009

 

Lambert-Beatty, Carrie. “Political people: Notes on Arte de Conducta,”on “Tania Bruguera: On the political Imaginary.” Survey Catalog. Neuberger Museum of Art,. Ed. Charta, 2010, (illust). ISBN 978-88-8158-764-3

 

León de la Barra, Pablo. "Tania Bruguera's Freedom of Speech' Performance at the Havana Biennial," Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution blog. 30 March, 2009 (illust.)

 

López, Miguel. "Performance Completado," Arte Nuevo Blog, April 9, 2009

 

Lux, Simonetta."La struttura della X Habana Bienal,"  LuxFlux, Italy, Nro.37, 2009.

 

Mosquera, Gerardo. “Cuba in Tania Bruguera’s work: The body is the social body,” Tania Bruguera: On the political imaginary, Ed Charta, Milano, Italy, 2009, (cover & illust.) pp. 23 - 35. ISBN 978-88-8158-764-3

 

Nieuwenhuyzen, Martijn van. "Integration and Resistance in the Global Era," Flash Art International Edition No. 267, July-September 2009, p. 28. 

 

__________________________. "The Best of 2009," Metropolis M. Utrecht,The Netherlands,December 28,2009

 

Pérez Moreno, Yanet. “Nadie está dispuesto al borrón y cuenta nueva," Cubaencuentro. Madrid, Spain. A talk with Tania Bruguera, after the debate created by her performance at the Havana Biennial, where bloggers and artists claimed for freedom and democracy, April, 2009 (illust.)

 

Pérez Piazarro, Renato. "Arts show features startling displays," Miami Herald Blog.  Miami, United States, April, 2009

Posner, Helaine. “Introduction,” Tania Bruguera: On the political imaginary, Ed Charta, Milano, Italy, 2009, (cover & illust.) pp.15 - 21. ISBN 978-88-8158-764-3

 

Rodríguez, Andrea. "'Performance' artístico se tiñe de política en Cuba," The Associated Press (AP.) Havana, Cuba, April 2, 2009

 

Sánchez, Yoani. "And they gave us the microphones...," Generation Y. Havana, Cuba, March 30, 2009 (video)

______________. "The Winds of Art, and of Freedom, Blew for a Few Minutes in Havana," Huffington Post, World Section. United States, April 17, 2009

______________. "State Security Blocks the Gate, I'm no longer allowed to attend concert," Huffington Post, World Section. United States, July 11, 2009

 

Santiago, Fabiola. "Artist's work lets Cubans speak out in Havana for freedom," Miami Herald & Raices Blog.  Miami, United States, April 1, 2009

_________________. "Participants in art show branded as `dissidents," Miami Herald, CANF. Miami, United States, April 1, 2009.

_________________. "Performance demanda libertad en la Bienal de La Habana," Boletín de Cuba.  Miami, United States, March 31, 2009

 

Tenconi, Roberta.  “Interview,” Ed. Jota Castro, Phobia Paper, A publication for The Fear Society, Pabellón de la Urgencia. Curated by Jota Castro, 53rd. Venice Bienale, 2009. Murcia Cultural S.A., 2009, pp. IV-V.

 

Triff, Alfredo. "Havana Biennial, performance and wacky politics," Miami Bourbaki. Miami, United States, July 3, 2009 (illust.)

 

Yncera, Julio. "Tania Bruguera Performance.  With Spanish Subtitles," Is all about math Blog. Maryland, United States, March 31, 2009 (video)

 

Williamson, Sue. "International Reviews, 10th Havana Biennial," ArThrob. April 30

 

“…Tatlin's Whisper #6 (Havana Version) (2009), in which viewers at the Havana Biennial were permitted one minute each of "free speech" while standing at a podium in an ironic quotation, complete with trained white dove, of a famous 1959 speech by Fidel Castro. At SUNY Purchase, Bruguera presented remnants of this event's staging: the props such as a stage, a podium and microphone, a video camera (with footage of the original event playing in the viewfinder), and a gold curtain backdrop. While some critiqued this work in 2009 as optimistically implying that globalized art could pry open restrictions on culture in autocratic regimes, the restaging evidenced the original's artificiality, lack of spontaneity, and profound insufficiency. The one‐minute format analogized the spurious freedom of the Biennial as a whole, as opposed to any liberatory effect…”

Daniel Quiles. “The Artist is Absent: notes on Tania Bruguera," Arte al Día International, 2010

 

 

 

 

Let us talk about Tatlin's Whisper in its Havana version. To start with, I would like to repeat two questions made to the author of Letatlin in 1932 (interviewed by K. Zelinsky, 06-04-32): How did you arrive at that idea? What was the practical purpose of your device?

 

I arrived at the idea following two paths. The first one, which has been going around in my head for a long time, has to do with the usefulness of art, usefulness not only in human understanding, but in the practical implementation of the Utopian possibilities of art. Among the most interesting examples are those carried out within socialist systems, as is the case with Tatlin's work. I am interested in favoring a dialogue on this topic and exemplify it through my own work. I have also been always interested in Tatlin's idea of making a monument that is at the same time a structure with functions that are not only strictly aesthetic and belonging to the historical memory. But the title "Tatlin's Whisper" contains criticism to the state of the left in these times. The discourse is now in a more precarious state: it is no longer an urgent cry or a cry of pain: it is a mere whisper. This is the way those in power have used art as a tool for propaganda. At the beginning of the October Revolution, art had to be propaganda, it was the product of a state of enthusiasm in which there still was some naiveté, where there was space for doubt and experimentation, where people were involved in the euphoria of believing their own propaganda and in the benefits they considered it had (and which have been replaced by advertising).

 

On the other hand, I arrived at the idea taking into consideration the indifference of news, the anesthetized way in which they may make us feel, how we can cut ourselves off from a terrible situation taking place somewhere else because it does not directly affect us and how this feeling is entirely ethic and emotions move through intellectual reasonings. I am very interested in the idea of citizen responsibility. Not responsibility with past history, but daily responsibility, a responsibility that is not clearly seen because it demands constant attention from us and taking an ethical or political position on things that perhaps are not entirely defined, that are in the making. Tatlin's Whisper integrates images we see in the newscasts. With this series I try to transform some of these images in actual experiences of the spectators, with the hope that those participating, when seeing a similar image again, may have a way to relate with it not only incorporating political knowledge, but also the effects of the experience they underwent and, therefore, would have a more direct dimension of political emotional knowledge.

Tamara Díaz Bringas "Cuba, Flying Machines and Trojan Horses," Tercer Texto Nr.1 (Third Text, Nr.20), 2010. 

 

 

 

 

A variety of anti- and some pro-revolutionary voices were heard, a woman wept, and a young man said he never felt so free. Nearly forty people spoke in all. Their calls for freedom echoed for an hour, after which time the artist ended the performance by stepping up to the podium and thanking the Cuban people. By providing a public platform for the audience to speak out against censorship, to call for liberty and democracy, or to state whatever was on their mind, the artist tested the limits of acceptable behavior under a totalitarian regime in an attempt to create a socially useful forum. In the following days, the event was officially renounced by the Biennial’s organizing committee, but by then the people had spoken and footage of their statements received over 47,000 hits on YouTube.”

Helaine. “Introduction,” Tania Bruguera: On the political imaginary, 2010.

 

 

 

Tatlin's Whisper #6 (Havana Version) took Irit Rogoff's productive notion of "the exhibition as occasion" to the extreme, while un iting art with the real, as in The Burden of Guilt. In her lecture-performance On Politics, Bruguera has pointed out that "art is a safe platform from which to have a dialogue about political ideas and even try new political structures." The first person to take the podium was Guadalupe Álvarez, a Cuban critic and professor who played an instrumental role in the so-called New Cuban Art by supporting and discussing it during the 1990s,while introducing contemporary theory at Havana's University and Art Institute, for which she was given so much trouble that she was forced to resign. She finally left the country for Ecuador, where she still lives today. The military-looking actress put the white dove on Álvarez's shoulder, in an obvious allusion to the emblematic image of dove-on-the-shoulder Castro delivering his first speech in 1959 in Havana after the revolutionary victory against dictator Fulgencio Batista. Meanwhile, the actor kept control of time on his watch. To general surprise, all Álvarez did at the podium was cry, a painful, awesome â€¨statement given the performance's references, the context, and her personal story.Many diverse speaker s went to the podium, received the dove on their shoulders, and, if they exceeded the one-minute limit, were violently taken away by the "military" actor. Among the initial speakers was Yoanni Sánchez, a famous young Cuban blogger, officially tagged as an active political dissident, who advocated for free Internet access in the country. The performance snowballed into an unexpected, spontaneous political rally. Statements ranged from calls for free elections to shouts of "Freedom! Freedom!" Participants in the audience became outspoken while, at the same time, concern with repression saturated the environment with a tense, fearful climate. Perhaps the statement that epitomized the whole event was that by a woman who said that she wished that one day freedom of speech in Cuba would not have to be a performance. Indeed, Bruguera's art work managed to profit from art's privileges (aura, tolerance, international attention) in order to make the impossible possible in Cuba: a free public tribune. Art created the opportunity for political action, opening a space for freedom.

 

As one can see, an event like this is a major, striking issue in Cuba. The next day, the 10th Havana Biennial Organization Committee published an official proclamation condemning the performance in the most authoritarian terms and language. This declaration completed the work's semantic circle, showing its political impact. But, as Bruguera has also stated in On Politics, artists' privileged position can only exist if people with real access to power allow it. Why was a project like Tatlin's Whisper #6 (Havana Version) allowed? In my opinion, the Biennial organizers, the State Security, and other implicated officials miscalculated the possibility of people reacting so strongly to the occasion facilitated by the performance. 

 

They probably thought that self-censorship as a result of terror would make people afraid to take the risk of speaking out and, in the case of someone going beyond the limits, his action would take place within a reduced art context. The authorities possibly considered also that the audience would chiefly consist of international visitors and that some light critical expressions would serve to project a good image. The prospect of no one daring to speak out was also considered by the artist, who conceived her piece to work in a different way in case the public remained silent. She thought of the empty podium as a "monument to the void," a monument to Castro's absence after fifty years of being a daily, overwhelming presence for Cubans. Also, an empty podium with two microphones was famously painted in 1968 by Antonia Eiriz, a leading Cuban artist who was censored and who reacted by renouncing art for the rest of her life in a dramatic statement about repression and freedom. The empty podium would clearly refer to that emblematic Cuban painting and the story behind it. 

 

But that did not happen, and what took the authorit ies by surprise and upset them the most, as can be deduced from the official declaration's content, was the presence and participation in the performance of persons officially labeled as dissidents. Since the mid-1980s, many of the artists in Cuba have played a critical role by frequently discussing the country's crisis in a serious and complex mode. Most of these critical artists, including Bruguera herself, can be considered dissidents. However, until Tatlin's Whisper #6 (Havana Version), there was a split in Cuba between critical artists and opponents to the regime who by engaging in direct, peaceful political resistance are marked as dissidents and "counterrevolutionaries" and treated harshly. As in Sánchez's case, their actions usually consist of criticizing and denouncing the situation in Cuba-very similar to what artists do. However, the latter are not classified as dissidents and enjoy tolerance by virtue of being artists-many of them are well known internationally-and thanks to the indirect, metaphoric character of art's political criticism.

Gerardo Mosquera “Cuba in Tania Bruguera’s work: The body is the social body,” 2010.

 

 

 

 

The man told us that the institution reserves the right to refuse admission and we could not enter because we’d participated in a provocative action “against this” during the Havana Biennial. My girlfriends had no idea what he was talking about but I asked him if he could be more specific and he said that we were being denied entry for having spoken into Wilfredo Lam’s microphone during “Tatlin Whisper” performance of Tania Bruguera.

I told him I’d been there but that surely there was a mistake because many people had been there that day; he asked me to wait a minute and went off to “consult.” 

Claudia Cadelo "Cut off from the 'culture'," Octavio Cerco Blog, July 24, 2009.

 

 

 

 

Since setting up Arte de Conducta, Bruguera has tried to avoid producing imitators by not showing her own work in Cuba. Because "Estado de Excepción" marked the closing of this school, she broke her rule, and accepted Guillermo Gomez-Peña's invitation to produce a work. The result, El susurro de Tatlin #6 (Tatlin's Whisper #6), 2009, is the sixth of an ongoing series of actions that, in Bruguera's words, reproduce images familiar from real life as direct and participatory experiences for the viewer. One of the most memorable of these actions took place at Tate Modern in January 2008: Bruguera invited two mounted policemen to appear on the packed bridge of the Turbine Hall and work through their full range of crowd-control techniques: herding viewers into a central pool, dividing them, blocking the exits, and so on. A previous performance, El susurro de Tatlin #3, 2006, involved a homemade-bomb-making workshop at Galería Juana de Aizpuru in Madrid.

 

For the new piece in Havana, a large brown curtain was hung in the central courtyard of the Centro Wifredo Lam as the backdrop to a raised podium with microphones, and two hundred disposable cameras were issued to the audience, who were informed that for the duration of the performance they would have freedom of speech for one minute each. The atmosphere was utterly electric, in contrast to the flaccidity of innumerable "soap box" events organized by artists in the West. A long pause ensued as the media thronged in anticipation. Would anyone speak their mind and face the consequences? A woman was the first to mount the podium, where she simply wept, her hands shaking as she clutched the microphone. Like all the subsequent speakers, she was flanked by a man and woman in military garb, who placed a white dove on her shoulder in a visual echo of a moment in Fidel Castro's postrevolutionary speech in 1959 when a dove landed on his shoulder-an image that Bruguera's trained bird deftly demythologized. The well-known dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez was next and began her plea for freedom of access to the Internet by declaring, "Cuba is a country surrounded by the sea, and it is also an island surrounded by censorship." Almost forty people followed, including a student who announced that he was twenty years old and had never felt more free. Those who spoke for longer than a minute were forcibly bundled off stage by the fatigues-clad duo.

 

The combination of formal precision (the setup of the podium, the militaristic assistants, the uncontrolled dissemination of documentation via the cameras) was countered by the unpredictability of the flapping dove and the mixed emotions of those who spoke. As with all participatory works, the content was somewhat hit-or-miss: Alongside pained calls for "Libertad!" and reminders that "one day, freedom of expression in Cuba will not be a performance," there was the occasional prorevolutionary voice ("Millions of children die every day, and none of them are Cuban!"), plus the inevitable foreigners jumping on the bandwagon. After one hour Bruguera closed the piece by pointedly thanking all the Cubans.

 

In the following days, the biennial's organizing committee published a communiqué repudiating the comments of those who had spoken on the podium, arguing that they had hijacked the event to "strike a blow at the Cuban Revolution." This document didn't indict Bruguera directly-but as Sánchez notes on her blog, Generation Y (where she has also published an English translation of the communiqué), the piece would not have been complete without this official reaction; indeed, its absence would have proved that Bruguera's event was a performance staged for the benefit of international visitors. (On the other hand, the influx of foreigners during the biennial contributed to an easing of restrictions that made it possible for this performance to take place at all.)

 

Could a project like El susurro de Tatlin #6, with its experiential potency and the capacity to hit a political nerve, ever work in the West? Watching this piece made me melancholic about my own context, where calls for freedom and democracy have been so entirely compromised and devalued (for example, by US foreign policy) that they no longer hold as a point of collective rallying. This raises a troubling paradox: Was Bruguera's event in Havana so artistically and politically powerful because of the repressive ideology that it was produced under and that it opposed? Ironically, this regime was, after all, also the main reason why so much of the biennial came across as ideologically correct and, as a result, utterly tepid.

 

One way to think through this tension is to consider Bruguera's term useful art. The phrase is not about using art to do good, as in the recent proliferation of "NGO art": projects that aim to find concrete solutions to local problems rather than criticizing or representing them. Instead, for Bruguera, useful art denotes a conjunction of political action and illegality-understood here as pushing against the boundaries of what those in power define as legal and acceptable, and being willing to embrace the criminal if necessary-so that art might achieve something in the social field (be this civil liberties or cultural politics), as well as taking a position within the long history of such artistic gestures. In the case of El susurro de Tatlin #6, Bruguera succeeded in granting Cubans an hour of free speech; in "Estado de Excepción," she got a whole generation of young Cuban artists to be fully accredited exhibitors in the Biennial. Although she denies that art has much to do with these collateral achievements, their experiential intensity is profoundly aesthetic, as is her ability to realize a conceptual framework that twists in the direction of two domains at once.

Claire Bishop “Speech Disorder: Claire Bishop on Tania Bruguera at the 10th Havana Biennial”, Artforum, Summer 2009.