The
LA Review of Books has
an interview with performance artist Tania Bruguera2, who was recently detained in her native Cuba for attempting to stage performances and demonstrations protesting the Cuba governments repressive free-speech policies. She has since been released from detention, but her passport has been revoked and she is forbidden from leaving Havana. In the interview, Bruguera discusses the Cuban Revolution, her conception of performance art, and the relentless surveillance she's had to endure since her detention:
Your work is often called “useful art.” What does that mean?
I’m not interested in representation. I’m interested in art as a way to present a potential new reality instead of reproducing what we already see. I work in performance art, live art, so it’s easy to put people in a situation where they are living at the moment as it is actually happening — something different from their everyday life. So for me it is a useful medium to challenge reality.
But doesn’t art by its very definition involve a separation from ordinary reality? A kind of curated reality?
No. Performance art is different because it is a living experience. The great challenge of this medium is precisely how to work without boundaries between art and life and how to push the boundaries between art and life. Instead of having suspension of belief you have affirmation of belief.
It seems the 1959 revolution is performed in Cuba like that — a daily performance all over the island.
It is used that way, yes. We have had for 50 years a “branding” of a revolution — but it is the opposite of revolution. We have had a successful literacy campaign and healthcare for all, but the rest has been “branding” over and over again that no one is allowed to criticize. Criticism is counterrevolutionary. A revolution dies as soon as you get into power, unless you create a system in which you are questioning yourself all the time and changing all the time. That’s not what happened in Cuba.
Who influences you artistically?
What influences me most is the revolution itself. Having a struggle with power is what I’m about as an artist. At the beginning I wanted to understand power. Then I wanted to represent power, to identify it. And slowly but surely I understood the best way to work in dialogue with power is to take over their strategies and use it against them.
http://conversations.e-flux.com/t/tania-bruguera-on-cuba-and-the-fight-for-free-speech/2041
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