10TH HAVANA BIENNIAL

Integration and Resistance in the Global Era: Personal Reflections

By Julia P. Herzberg

(Spanish language version follows English version.)

In the wake of devastating hurricanes and a faltering local and global economy, the Havana Biennial successfully harnessed the support of Cuban institutions as well as friends, foundations, and governments outside the island. In celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Havana Biennial (it began in 1984), the Biennial outdid itself in notable ways. It was no small accomplishment that some 323 artists in seventeen venues were selected and organized by a curatorial committee of eight full-time curators, sixteen outside curators, thirteen consulting curators, and nineteen assistants. The Biennial catalogue (532 pages), as well as those for the Theoretical Event and the Compilation of Texts, are the most ambitious and thorough documents produced since inception and will undoubtedly serve as inestimable resources for future studies on biennials in general and this one in particular.

Since 1989 the biennials have been organized around broad thematic concerns. This year’s theme, Integration and Resistance in the Global Era, is a concept that occupies the daily thinking, planning, and activities of every kind for billions of people.1 Artists, individually and collectively, responded through painting, installations, prints, photographs, video, film, and Xeroxes. The work presented proposes, challenges, embraces, and disputes cultural, political, and economic diversity—an admirable, even wondrous achievement. There were spectacular formal projects, such as Chelsea Meets Havana, and others, more anthropological in nature. Twenty-six galleries in New York presented work by artists, and the El maíz es nuestra vida project, conceived by and for women from Mexico, presented installations, videos, performance, a rap group, and a workshop in the community. Both Chelsea and El maíz offered audiences diverse visual and conceptual messages, symbolic of the expansive languages of the art worlds’ many centers and peripheries.

The Biennial continues to give significant presence to Cuban artists, at different stages of their careers, thus introducing outsiders to what may be acknowledged as a lion’s share of extraordinary talent. Below I mention Alexandre Arrechea, Tania Bruguera, Liset Castillo, Carlos Garaicoa, Alexis Leyva Machado (Kcho), and Yoan Capote, among others, whose visually compelling, well-crafted works address concerns in everyday life from the proximity of the front door to a corner around the world. Arrechea’s installation La habitación de todos (2009) includes a video, drawings, and a sculpture, elements that connected the fluctuations of the Dow Jones Industrial Average to the housing crisis in the United States. The video projected footage of the Dow; the drawings featured the houses; the sculpture, constructed on a long table, consisted of a row of metal houses in silhouette on a long metal pole with a chart spanning the length of the sculpture. The chart has lines with numbers from 0 to 100, representing the percentage point changes of the market. At the end of each day, the artist hand-cranked the pole so the houses expanded or contracted according to the Dow’s upward or downward fluctuations. (The artist intends to make a large-scale, automated sculpture based on this model.)

Castillo’s Archaeologies of Power (2009) is a model with 216 modern buildings depicting an urban epicenter with skyscrapers surrounded by residential properties. The title seems to refer to a world-renowned group of architects whose “visionary” buildings have had a visceral impact on millions of citizens. The model, however, also underscores the interests of curators who present an architect’s proposals, in the form of drawings and models, to a larger public before a building’s actual construction. (Consider, for example, recent exhibitions of drawings and models of such Pritzker Architecture Prize recipients as Norman Foster, Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid, and Renzo Piano, among others.) Capote’s Open Mind (2006-2008) is a large-scale site-specific installation configured in the image of a brain with its upper part open to reveal a maze of passageways. Conceived as a future public artwork, the spectator views the model (at El Morro Cabaña) from a ramp looking out and down into the sculpture where life-sized figures were placed inside some of the walkways. Aside from its attraction as an installation, as well as its potential as a public artwork, the title, form, and meaning call for an open mind in what might be a redefining period in Cuban political history.

The exhibition of photographs and installations of Carlos Garaicoa at the Museum of Fine Arts was characterized by humor, irony, double meanings, and wordplays. The artist’s photographs of old, decayed, destroyed, or abandoned buildings in Havana are poignant reminders of the contingent nature of everyday life. The House of Cards (2006-2009) illustrates the artist’s modification of a photograph of a store no longer in business. The intervention consists of drawing images of irons with pins and thread, thereby investing the dilapidated scene with a sense of the vitality of its former commercial life.

Bruguera’s El susurro de Tatlin #6 was performed in the inner courtyard of the Center Wifredo Lam. The performance space consisted of a platform located in front of a long theater curtain, a podium, a microphone, two young attendants dressed in green fatigues, and a dove that was placed on each speaker’s shoulder. Bruguera stated that she wanted her work to provide a space where people could speak about Cuba’s realities.”[2] In the absence of a formal introduction, the performance came to life when a person from the audience read her one-minute commentary in which she called for unrestricted access to the internet “to write opinions.” Another person went to the podium and exclaimed: “Long live democracy.” Another expressed the hope that the day would come when expressions of liberty would not be part of a performance. Although the majority of persons asked for substantive changes in present policies, some people spoke in favor of them.

Surprised by the forthright nature of the varied responses, I consider Bruguera’s performance successful because it created, for however briefly, a space for divergent voices that presented their views in a civil manner. If subsequent political change occurs, elements of that discourse will ultimately be negotiated outside the Biennial venue. It will be interesting, indeed, to watch the ripple effects of that performatic moment.

Most of the videos and installations were presented at the San Carlos de la Cabaña Fortress, a historic monument overlooking Havana Bay. Punto de encuentro was installed in the dry moat between two massive stone walls outside the entrance to La Cabaña. Kcho, together with a cadre of many artists, musicians, actors, dancers, and art instructors re-created a small, tent city similar to those set up in several places in Cuba after 2008’s devastating hurricanes. They comprised a core of volunteers known as the Brigada Marta Machado, named in honor of the artist’s mother. After toiling all day, everyone gathered in a special tent to participate in artistic activities, hear concerts, and see movies. The evenings of “art” provided great emotional relief for those who had lost everything.[3] At the Biennial, similar artistic events also took place in the Galería: by day the public could see the documentation of the reconstruction work as it progressed; by night, the public heard live concerts.[4 ]

Inside La Cabaña in some six pavilions, many works gave pause for both enjoyment and reflection. A few examples follow. Lluis Barba’s Garden of Delights (Bosco) adapts the imagery from Hieronymus Bosch’s 16th-century painting of the same title. The Spanish artist inserted contemporary images of people, places, and objects culled from many sources. The “garden” thus became a nonhierarchical place for interaction among the wealthy and the poor, the institutionalized and the marginalized, the religious and the secular, the famous and the anonymous. New figures in the garden include high-profile art collectors, critics, artists, movie stars, rappers, musicians, and singers. Even Batman makes an appearance along with Buddhist monks, Catholic nuns, malnourished children, and a beggar woman amidst cash machines, soccer balls, and footballs, and iconic images and logos of multinationals such as Coca Cola and Mac Donald’s. References to both local and global production and consumption populate the regions of heaven, earth, and hell as imagined by Bosch and transformed by Barba.

Dan Halter’s Zimbabwe $1 Million (2009) is a bas-relief map of a farming region in Zimbabwe formerly known as “the bread basket” of southern Africa. The map is made from a million shredded Zimbabwe notes, all but worthless currency due to hyperinflation. The work critiques the failed political policies of the former government that in 2000 appropriated white-run farms, thereby creating conditions in which the economy began its downward spiral.[5] Formally, the artist draws on the rich tradition of African textiles, known for their complicated weaving and design. Halter’s delicate yet intricate work recalls the extraordinary art of El Anatsui, the Ghanaian born artist, who uses strips of metal to weave large-scale tapestry-like sculptures in the form of textiles.

In contrast to Halter, Patrick Hamilton’s installation Pails (2005- 2009) speaks to the new wealth produced by the banking and finance industries in Santiago, Chile. The series of photographic views (housed in shallow pails) of the new architectural zone is evidence of the boom resulting from the neo-liberal policies of more than twenty years.

Resistance to genetically produced corn is the subject of Eduardo Villanes’s Genética de luz (2009), an installation featuring twenty-nine beadworks, each made from 858 tiny translucent glass beads of different shades of red, blue, yellow, and green arranged in patterns that represent the bonding of four nucleotides in a specific gene sequence in naturally grown corn, Zea mays. One of the beadworks was projected on the wall; the others were exhibited in a light table together with an enlarged printout of a page from an online DNA database maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The NCBI page provides the name of the specific organism, Zea mays (corn or maize); the sequence of the 1,561 nucleotides of a gene (a fragment being atggcggtgtg); the names of authors of the article “DNA constructs and methods to enhance the production of commercially viable transgenic plants”; the patent number and the date, and the name of Monsanto Laboratory LLC (US). Villanes included the NCBI page so that viewers could become informed of the attempts of biotech companies to penetrate traditional markets with transgenic corn. If successful, the millennium-long tradition of farming natural corn in the Americas will be altered. (Appropriate to this context, El maíz es nuestra vida was an exhibition in which Mexican artists protested the introduction of transgenic corn in Mexico.)

Many artists explored globalization as a subject in diverse formal, conceptual, and semantic modes. I mention Dario Escobar’s (Guatemala) and Sue Williamson’s (South Africa) works. Escobar’s Kukukam (2009), made of strips of bicycle tires, formed a large, organic, soft sculpture that seemed to emphasize the world’s dependency on rubber for all modes of transportation. *Williamson’s work at the Center Wifredo Lam, showed a series of photographs, What about El Max (2005), documenting the sentiments of villagers in a small fishing community in Alexandria, Egypt that is threatened by the military as well as by pollution from a nearby petrochemical company.[6] When interviewing the residents, the artist learned that they preferred to remain in their community rather than relocate, even if their collective livelihood was at risk. In conversations with them, Williamson suggested they inform the world of their plight which subsequently appeared as messages of resistance in Arabic and English on the facades of their houses: “We are like fish—we cannot live away from the sea.”

In the shifting frames of moving images, Claudia Aravena (Chile) and Ananke Asseff (Agentina) produced works that explore emotions of fear. In Aravena’s video Fear (2007), the artist portrays herself, in different face and head coverings worn by many Muslim woman, murmuring the word, fear.[7] Similar images of the artist are juxtaposed against classic scenes from Alfred Hichcock’s movie The Birds. Aravena’s narration attempts to illustrate the ways images and language form negative responses of the “other.”

Asseff’s photographs and video, Potencial (2005-2007), portrays Argentineans armed with guns in the privacy of their homes. Judging from the worried facial expressions, the subjects project states of anxiety over fears of being robbed and needing to defend themselves. On the Road: Northern Exposure (2008) is a video narrative based on a trip Yong Soon Min took to North Korea in 1998 with two academic colleagues and their North Koreans minders. Ten years later Min decided to edit footage taken on a day when the group traveled between Pyongyang and the DMZ (demilitarized zone). She was inspired to create a visual narrative by Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, his seminal Beat novel that took ten years to complete. She saw his experiences as a metaphor of her own struggles to recall the blurred images of places and people in a country that is now all but inaccessible to outsiders. Min’s video makes some use of slow motion to sustain moments of fleeting places and to provide “a sense of [the] intimacy and connection,” that was never realized. At the beginning of the video, Min’s voiceover recites stanzas from T.S. Eliot’s poem “Ash Wednesday” that acknowledge the impossibility of holding on to place and time: “Because I know that time is always time / And place is always and only place / And what is actual is actual for one time / And only for one place.” In ending, Min poses unanswered questions regarding her trip to North Korea, which, she states, is burdened by too much cold war history. In retrospect, the artist realizes “that even then, that place and time did not seem its own.”

On a less philosophical note, Chen, Xiaoyun (China) created a very humorous four-minute video, Love You Big Boss (2008). He directed an ersatz group of people, who played the beginning stanzas of The Star Spangled Banner in tune before going off into an improvisational jam session out of tune. The resulting disharmony seems to reflect a cacophonous spirit of China in change. Who is Big Boss, anyway, in this shifting world power scenario? You decide. In ending this article, I mention Cai, Guo-Qiang (Chinese), *Luis Camnitzer (Uruguay, based in the U.S.), Máximo Corvalán (Chile), *Guillermo Goméz Peña (Mexico, based in the U.S.), *León Ferrari (Argentina), and *Antonio Martorell (Puerto Rico). These diverse works appeal for different sensorial or cerebral reasons. During Cai’s spectacular outdoor performance in Plaza San Francisco, he ignited a boat with gunpowder, mesmerizing hundreds with the ephemeral effects of the explosives.[8]

Goméz Peña’s performance, Corpo Ilicito, was also received with great enthusiasm. The multidisciplinary artist spoke in tongues, interweaving English, Spanish, and imaginatively inventive words as he conjured a critical, parodic discourse on inter- and intra-border issues loaded with a range of humanitarian issues.[9] The artist’s work, consistent with many others in the Biennial, affirms art as a necessary experience within the political and cultural definitions of society.

Camnitzer’s Last Words (2006-2008), part of a larger exhibition at the Center Wifredo Lam, consisted of seven letters found on the web. The letters contain the last words written by prisoners shortly before their executions in Texas and express their heartfelt love for their families. It was somewhat surprising to read the condemned prisoners’ sentiments, accustomed as we are to the emotional outpourings of the victims’ families.

Corvalán’s installation at the Morro Cabaña combines painting, sculpture, and neon signs. The title, Free Trade Ensambladura (2005- 2009), references a series of free-trade agreements with Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the United States resulting in global partnerships that have expanded Chile’s economic bases. The painting features the Atacama Desert, a major region of copper mining; the sculpture features reproductions of Atacamenian mummies. The neon signs inserted in the mummies exclaim: “WELCOME,” “DE PASO (Passing By),” “OPEN.” The words add layers of elusive meaning to the disconcerting images of the mummies, providing moments for reflection on Chile’s recent sociopolitical shifts.

León Ferrari: Agitador de Formas at the Casa de las Américas was a kind of mini-retrospective demonstrating the visual, material, conceptual, and critical power of this multifaceted creator. Planeta is a globe covered with toy cockroaches. The bugs, each with a small flag attached to its body, cross the lands and seas in formation. Where is the resistance to this invasion? There doesn’t seem to be any! With death as his muse, Martorell created La Plena inmortal (2007), an exhibition of woodblocks with images appropriated from historical masters and transformed by inserting the image of a skeleton as subject of the portrait.10 With characteristic humor and matter-of-factness, Martorell wrote: “Immortal Plena, because death sings and invites us to dance, and because we mortals swing to the song she plays, whenever she wants to play it, she, Plena, death herself, is immortal. Meanwhile, we mortals, face the music and dance.

Work from Martorell’s series, together with woodcuts, linotypes, and potato prints made by local people of all ages, was installed throughout the Plaza de la Catedral on the last day of the inaugural week of the Biennial. During that joyous event, hundreds danced the plena in the public square where art and life were integrated. It seems appropriate to end on this celebratory note.

Notes

[1] Rubén del Valle Lantarón, director of the Biennial, wrote: “The term has become one of the most appealed to for the analysis of the phenomena of the contemporary world, whether of domestic, ecologic, technologic, scientific, political or cultural nature. It is a new era where conflicts excel the already traditional North-South, East-West, Capitalism-Socialism poles to become issues that involve the whole planet to an equal extent and where the survival of the human species is at stake in many cases.” Décima Bienal Habana: Integration and Resistance in the Global Era. Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam. Consejo Nacional de las Artes Plásticas (2009), p. 19.
[2] See http://www.cubaencuentro.com/es/entrevistas/articulos/nadie-esta-dispuesto- al-borron-y-cuenta-nueva-171188
[3] Rubén Del Valle, email communication with the author, May 12, 2009.
[4] This site-specific encampment had a dramatic visual appeal similar to that of Kaarina Kaikkonen’s Departure (2003), an installation of 1,500 jackets furling in the wind, forming the outline of a large boat also located in the same place in the dry moat.
[5] Very recently the new unity government started to allow foreign currency to be used instead of Zimbabwe dollars.
[6] An asterisk before an artist’s name indicates that they were “a specially invited artist.”
[7] Aravena’s father is Chilean and her mother Palestinian. Much of the artist’s work deals with transcultural issues.
[8] The artist was part of the exhibition Punto de encuentro organized by Kcho at the Convento de San Francisco (see note 2 above).
[9] Goméz Peña invited Tania Bruguera to collaborate by creating two different performances that were supposed to take place simultaneously in separate, but nearby, patios on the first floor of the Center Wifredo Lam. For reasons unknown to me, the audience remained in place during the Bruguera performance and then moved on to participate in Goméz Peña’s. He refers to his cast as “chicubanaria” in acknowledgment of their Cuban, Chicano, Canary Islands, and Spanish backgrounds. See “Goméz Peña explica su posición frente a la ‘Controversia’ Tania Bruguera,” written from Mexico City on April 13. I received it from the Center Wifredo Lam on April 24, 2009.
[10] The plena is a popular song and dance composition originally from Puerto Rico; it serves as a narrative for events as diverse as politics, sports, crime, and natural disasters.

Integration and Resistance in the Global Era. 10th Havana Biennial

(La versión en español)

La Bienal de La Habana, que se llevó a cabo tras el paso de devastadores huracanes y en medio de una tambaleante economía local y global, supo aprovechar con éxito el apoyo de instituciones cubanas, así como de amigos del exterior y de fundaciones y gobiernos extranjeros. Al celebrar su vigésimo quinto aniversario (fue creada en 1984), la Bienal se superó a sí misma de maneras significativas. No fue un logro menor el que 323 artistas distribuidos en diecisiete espacios expositivos fueran seleccionados y organizados por un Comité Curatorial compuesto por ocho curadores de tiempo completo, dieciséis curadores extranjeros, trece curadores consultores y diecinueve asistentes. El catálogo de la Bienal (532 páginas), así como los catálogos del Evento Teórico y la Compilación de Textos, son los documentos más ambiciosos y minuciosos que se hayan producido desde la creación de la Bienal, y sin duda constituirán un recurso inestimable para estudios futuros sobre las bienales en general y sobre ésta en particular.

Desde 1989, las bienales se han organizado teniendo como eje temáticas de interés general. El tema del presente año, Integración y Resistencia en la Era Global, es un concepto que ocupa a diario el pensamiento, la planificación y las actividades de todas clases de billones de personas.[1] Los artistas respondieron, tanto individual como colectivamente, a través de la pintura, la instalación, el grabado, la fotografía, el video, la cinematografía y la xerografía. La obra seleccionada desafiaba, abrazaba y cuestionaba la diversidad cultural, política y económica—un logro admirable y hasta se podría decir, increíble. Se pudieron apreciar proyectos formales espectaculares, tales como Chelsea Meets Havana y otros de carácter más antropológico. Veintiséis galerías de Nueva York presentaron obras de artistas, y el proyecto El maíz es nuestra vida, concebido por y para mujeres mexicanas, presentó instalaciones, videos, performance, un grupo de “rap” y un taller comunitario. Tanto Chelsea como El maíz ofrecieron al público diversos mensajes visuales y conceptuales, símbolos de los lenguajes comunicativos de los numerosos centros y periferias del mundo del arte.

La Bienal continua proporcionando una significativa presencia a los artistas cubanos en diferentes etapas de sus carreras, haciendo conocer de este modo a las personas ajenas al medio lo que puede considerarse la parte del león en el reparto de un talento extraordinario. Más abajo menciono a Alexandre Arrechea, Tania Bruguera, Liset Castillo, Carlos Garaicoa, Alexis Leyva Machado (Kcho) y Yoan Capote, entre otros, cuyas obras, de buena factura técnica y visualmente atractivas, abordaron temáticas de la vida cotidiana desde la proximidad de la puerta de entrada hasta una esquina al otro lado del mundo.

La instalación de Arrechea, La habitación de todos (2009) incluía un video, dibujos y una escultura, elementos que conectan las fluctuaciones del Promedio Industrial Dow Jones a la crisis de la vivienda en Estados Unidos. El video proyectaba secuencias del índice Dow; los dibujos mostraban las casas; la escultura, emplazada sobre una mesa larga, consistía en una hilera de perfiles de casas en metal atravesados por una larga vara también metálica y un gráfico que se extendía a lo largo de toda la escultura. El gráfico contenía líneas numeradas del 0 al 100 que representaban las variaciones porcentuales del mercado. Al final de cada día, el artista hacía girar una manivela de manera que el espacio entre los perfiles de las casas se expandiera o contrajera según las fluctuaciones en alza o en baja del índice Dow. (El artista tiene la intención de realizar una escultura automática de gran escala basada en este modelo).

La obra de Castillo, Arqueologías del poder (2009), una maqueta constituida por 216 edificios modernos, representaba un epicentro urbano con rascacielos rodeados de propiedades residenciales. El título parecía hacer referencia a un grupo de arquitectos de renombre internacional cuyos edificios “visionarios” han tenido un impacto visceral sobre millones de ciudadanos. Sin embargo, la maqueta también ponía de relieve los intereses de los curadores que presentan a una gran audiencia las propuestas de un arquitecto, bajo la forma de dibujos y maquetas, antes de que se concrete la construcción de un edificio. (Considérense, por ejemplo, las recientes exposiciones de dibujos y maquetas de ganadores del Premio de Arquitectura Pritzker tales como Norman Foster, Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid y Renzo Piano, entre otros.)

La obra de Capote, Mente Abierta (2006-2008), una instalación a gran escala específica para el sitio, se basaba en la imagen de un cerebro con la parte superior descubierta para revelar un laberinto de corredores. Concebida como una futura obra para espacio público, el espectador observaba la maqueta (en El Morro Cabañas) desde una rampa que le permitía ver, desde arriba, la escultura en la que se habían colocado figuras humanas de tamaño real dentro de algunos de los pasajes. Aparte de su atractivo como instalación y además de su potencial como obra de arte público, el título, la forma y el significado requerían una mente abierta con respecto a lo que podría llegar a ser un período de redefinición en la historia política de Cuba.

La muestra de fotografías e instalaciones que presentó Carlos Garaicoa en el Museo de Bellas Artes se caracterizó por el humor, la ironía, el doble sentido y los juegos de palabras. Las fotografías del artista de edificios viejos, deteriorados, destruidos o abandonados en La Habana constituían conmovedores recordatorios de la naturaleza contingente de la vida cotidiana. La Casa de las planchas (2006- 2009) ilustraba la modificación que hace el artista de una fotografía de una gran tienda que ya no está en actividad. La intervención consistía en dibujar imágenes de planchas con alfileres e hilo, revistiendo de ese modo al ruinoso escenario con la sensación de vitalidad de su antigua vida comercial.

La performance de Bruguera, El susurro de Tatlin #6, se presentó en el patio interior del Centro Wifredo Lam. El espacio donde se montó la performance consistía en una plataforma ubicada frente a un largo telón de teatro, un podio, un micrófono, dos jóvenes asistentes que vestían trajes de fajina verdes y una paloma colocada sobre el hombro de cada orador. Bruguera declaró que quería que su obra ofreciera un espacio donde la gente pudiese hablar sobre las realidades de Cuba. Según expresó, “Propongo con mi obra un espacio diferente para hablar de la realidad cubana.”[2] A falta de una introducción formal, la performance cobró vida cuando una persona del público leyó su comentario de un minuto de duración, en el que exigía acceso irrestricto a Internet “para escribir una opinión.” Otra persona se subió al podio y exclamó: “Viva la democracia.” Otra expresó su esperanza de que “un día la libertad de expresión en Cuba no sería parte de una performance.” Aunque la mayoría de las personas reclamaron cambios más sustanciales en las políticas actuales, algunas hablaron a favor de ellas.

Me sorprendió la naturaleza directa de las variadas respuestas, y considero que la performance de Bruguera fue exitosa porque creó, aunque fuera brevemente, un espacio para las voces divergentes que presentaron sus opiniones cortésmente. Si con posterioridad se produce un cambio político, los elementos de ese discurso serán negociados en última instancia fuera del ámbito de la Bienal. De hecho, será interesante observar el efecto dominó desencadenado por ese momento performativo.

La mayoría de los videos e instalaciones fueron presentados en la Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, un monumento histórico que domina la Bahía de La Habana. La obra Punto de encuentro fue instalada en el foso seco entre dos macizos muros de piedra en el exterior de la entrada a La Cabaña. Kcho, junto a un cuadro compuesto por numerosos artistas, músicos, actores, bailarines e instructores de arte recrearon una pequeña ciudad de tiendas de campaña similar a aquéllas que se erigieran en varios lugares de Cuba tras los devastadores huracanes de 2008. Comprendían un núcleo duro de voluntarios conocido como la Brigada Marta Machado, denominada así en honor a la madre del artista. Luego del trabajo duro de la jornada, todos se reunían en una tienda especial para participar en actividades artísticas, escuchar conciertos y ver películas. Las noches de “arte” ofrecían un gran alivio emocional a aquellos que lo habían perdido todo.[3] En la Bienal, eventos artísticos similares también tenían lugar en la Galería: durante el día, el público podía ver la documentación de la tarea de reconstrucción a medida que progresaba; de noche, podía escuchar conciertos en vivo.[4]

En seis pabellones ubicados dentro de La Cabaña, numerosas obras proporcionaban una pausa para el deleite y la reflexión. Incluyo unos pocos ejemplos. Jardín de las delicias (Bosco), de Lluis Barba, adaptaba las imágenes del cuadro homónimo de Jerónimo Bosch del siglo XVI. El artista español insertó imágenes contemporáneas de personas, lugares y objetos seleccionados de numerosas fuentes. El “jardín” se convertía así en un lugar desprovisto de jerarquías para la interacción entre ricos y pobres, lo institucionalizado y lo marginado, lo religioso y lo secular, lo famoso y lo anónimo. Las nuevas figuras dentro del jardín incluían a prominentes coleccionistas de arte, críticos, artistas, estrellas de cine, ‘raperos’, músicos y cantantes. Hasta Batman hizo una aparición junto con monjes budistas, monjas católicas, niños desnutridos y una mendiga en medio de una serie de cajeros automáticos, pelotas de fútbol y de fútbol americano, e imágenes icónicas y logotipos de empresas multinacionales como Coca Cola y Mac Donald’s. Referencias a la producción y el consumo tanto locales como globales poblaban las regiones del cielo, la tierra y el infierno, tal como lo imaginara Bosch y lo transformara Barba. La obra de Dan Halter, Zimbabwe $1 Million (2009), presentó un mapa en bajorrelieve de una región agrícola de Zimbabwe conocida anteriormente como “la canasta de pan” del sur de África. El mapa había sido ejecutado con un millón de billetes de Zimbabwe –una moneda casi carente de valor debido a la hiperinflación – cortados en tiras. La obra critica las fallidas políticas del anterior gobierno, que en 2000 se había apropiado de haciendas administradas por blancos, creando de esa manera condiciones en las que la economía comenzó su espiral descendente.[5] En el aspecto formal, el artista se inspiró en la rica tradición de los textiles africanos, famosos por su complicada urdimbre y diseño. La obra delicada, aunque intrincada, de Halter, recuerda el arte extraordinario de El Anatsui, el artista originario de Ghana, que utiliza flejes de metal para tejer esculturas en forma de tapices a gran escala que semejan textiles.

A diferencia de la de Halter, la instalación de Patrick Hamilton, Baldes (2005-2009) se dirigía a la nueva riqueza surgida de la industria bancaria y financiera en Santiago, Chile. La serie de vistas fotográficas (alojadas en baldes de poca altura) de la nueva zona arquitectónica daba fe del boom resultante de más de veinte años de políticas neoliberales.

La resistencia al maíz producido genéticamente fue el tema de la obra de Eduardo Villanes, Genética de luz (2009), una instalación que presentaba veintinueve textiles con chaquiras, cada uno compuesto por 858 diminutos abalorios en diferentes tonos de rojo, azul, amarillo y verde, dispuestas de acuerdo a un patrón que representa la unión de cuatro nucleótidos en una secuencia genética específica del maíz cultivado naturalmente, Zea mays. Una de las chaquiras realizadas con cuentas se proyectaba en la pared; las otras se exhibían en una mesa de luz junto con la copia impresa de una página proveniente de un banco de datos on-line que mantiene al día el Centro Nacional de Información Biotecnológica – CNIB (National Center for Biotechnology Information -NCBI). La página del CNIB proporcionaba el nombre del organismo específico, Zea mays (maíz); la secuencia de los 1561 nucleótidos de un gen (siendo un fragmento atggcggtgtg); los nombres de los autores del artículo “DNA constructs and methods to enhance the production of commercially viable transgenic plants” (“Constructos de ADN y métodos para aumentar la producción de plantas transgénicas comercialmente viables”); el número de patente y la fecha, y el nombre ‘Laboratorio Monsanto LLC’ (EE. UU.). Villanes incluyó la página del CNIB para que los espectadores pudieran informarse sobre los intentos que llevan a cabo las compañías dedicadas a la biotecnología de penetrar con sorgo transgénico los mercados tradicionales. De tener éxito, la tradición milenaria de cultivar maíz en forma natural en las Américas se vería alterada. (Adecuada a este contexto, se presentó la muestra El Maíz Es Nuestra Vida, por medio de la cual artistas mexicanos se manifestaron en contra de la introducción de maíz transgénico en México).

Numerosos artistas exploraron la globalización como tema con distinto abordajes formales, conceptuales y semánticos. Hago mención de las obras de Darío Escobar (Guatemala) y Sue Williamson (Sudáfrica). La obra de Escobar, Kukukam (2009), compuesta por tiras de neumáticos de bicicleta, constituía una gran escultura orgánica y maleable que parecía resaltar la dependencia que tiene el mundo del látex para todos los medios de transporte. La obra de *Williamson, que se exhibió en el Centro Wifredo Lam, presentó una serie de fotografías, What about El Max (2005), documentando los sentimientos de los aldeanos de una pequeña comunidad pesquera en Alejandría, Egipto, amenazada por los militares así como también por la contaminación proveniente de una firma petroquímica que opera en sus cercanías.[6] Cuando entrevistó a los residentes, la artista se enteró de que preferían permanecer en su comunidad antes que ser reubicados, aun si esto implicaba que su forma comunitaria de ganarse la vida estaba en riesgo. En conversaciones con ellos, Williamson sugirió que informaran al mundo de la grave situación por la que atravesaban, lo que posteriormente apareció como mensajes de resistencia en árabe e inglés en las fachadas de sus casas. “Somos como los peces – no podemos vivir lejos del mar.”

En los cambiantes cuadros que mostraban imágenes móviles, Claudia Aravena (Chile) y Ananke Asseff (Agentina) crearon obras que exploran emociones relacionadas con el miedo. En el video de Aravena, Miedo (2007), la artista se retrataba a sí misma con la cara y la cabeza cubiertas con diferentes pañoletas como las utilizadas por muchas mujeres musulmanas, murmurando la palabra miedo.[7] Imágenes similares de la misma artista se yuxtaponían con escenas clásicas del film de Alfred Hichcock, Los pájaros. La narración de Aravena intentaba ilustrar los diferentes modos en que las imágenes y el lenguaje generan reacciones con respecto al “otro”.

Las fotografías y el video de Assef, Potencial (2005-2007), mostraban a ciudadanos argentinos armados con revólveres en la intimidad de sus hogares. A juzgar por las expresiones de preocupación en sus rostros, los sujetos proyectaban estados de ansiedad provocados por el miedo a ser robados y la necesidad de defenderse.

El video narrativo On the Road: Northern Exposure (2008) se basaba en un viaje a Corea del Norte que Yong Soon Min realizó en 1998 conjuntamente con dos colegas académicos y sus escoltas norcoreanos. Diez años más tarde, Min decidió editar el material filmado el día que el grupo se trasladó de Pyongyang a la ZDM (zona desmilitarizada). Para crear una narrativa visual se inspiró en la obra de Jack Kerouac, On the Road, la seminal novela Beat que le tomó al autor más de diez años completar. Min percibió las experiencias de Kerouac como una metáfora de sus propias luchas por recordar las imágenes borrosas de lugares y personas en un país que es en la actualidad virtualmente inaccesible para los visitantes. El video de Min recurría en alguna medida a los movimientos en cámara lenta para sostener el momento de permanencia de lugares efímeros y proporcionar “un sentido de intimidad y conexión” que nunca se dio. Al comienzo del video, la voz en off de Min recitaba estrofas del poema de T.S. Eliot “Ash Wednesday” (“Miércoles de Ceniza”), que reconocen la imposibilidad de aferrarse al tiempo y al lugar: “Porque sé que el tiempo es siempre tiempo/ y el lugar es siempre y solamente lugar/ y lo que es actual lo es sólo en cierto tiempo/ y para un solo lugar.” Al concluir, Min planteaba preguntas que quedaban sin respuesta con respecto a su viaje a Corea del Norte, que según declara, soportó el peso de demasiada historia de la Guerra Fría. En retrospectiva, la artista se da cuenta “de que aun entonces, ese lugar y ese tiempo no parecían ser dueños de sí mismos.”

En una vena menos filosófica, Chen, Xiaoyun (China) creó un video muy humorístico de cuatro minutos de duración, Love You Big Boss (2008). Dirigió a un grupo aleatorio de personas que tocaron afinadamente las primeras estrofas de The Star Spangled Banner antes de embarcarse en una sesión de jam fuera de tono. La disonancia resultante parecía reflejar el espíritu cacofónico de China en proceso de cambio. De todos modos, ¿Quién es ‘Big Boss’ (el Gran Jefe) en este cambiante escenario del poder mundial? Usted decide.

Para concluir este artículo, menciono a Cai, Guo-Qiang (China), *Luis Camnitzer (Uruguay, residente en Estados Unidos), Máximo Corvalán (Chile), *Guillermo Goméz Peña (México, residente en Estados Unidos.), *León Ferrari (Argentina) y *Antonio Martorell (Puerto Rico). Estas obras diversas resultan atrayentes por diferentes motivos sensoriales y cerebrales. En su espectacular performance al aire libre en la Plaza San Francisco, Cai utilizó pólvora para prender fuego a un barco, fascinando a cientos de espectadores con los efectos efímeros de los explosivos.[8]

La performance de Goméz Peña, Corpo Ilicito, también fue recibida con gran entusiasmo. El multidisciplinario artista habló en lenguas, entrelazando palabras en inglés, español y algunas imaginativamente inventadas, mientras conjuraba un discurso crítico y paródico sobre cuestiones transfronterizas e intrafronterizas cargado con un variado espectro de asuntos de contenido humanitario.[9] La obra del artista, que concuerda con muchas otras de las presentadas en la Bienal, afirma que el arte es una experiencia necesaria dentro de las definiciones políticas y culturales de la sociedad.

La obra de Camnitzer Últimas palabras (2006-2008), parte integrante de una exposición mayor presentada en el Centro Wifredo Lam, consistió en siete cartas encontradas en Internet. Las cartas contenían las últimas palabras escritas por presos poco tiempo antes de sus ejecuciones en Texas y expresaban su profundo amor por sus familias. Fue un tanto sorprendente enterarnos a través de esta lectura de los sentimientos de los presos condenados, acostumbrados como estamos a las efusiones emocionales de las familias de las víctimas.

La instalación de Corvalán en el Morro Cabaña combinaba pintura, escultura y letreros de neón. El título, Free Trade Ensambladura (2005- 2009) hacía referencia a una serie de tratados de libre comercio con América Latina, Europa, Asia y Estados Unidos que dieron por resultado sociedades globales que han contribuido a expandir las bases económicas de Chile. La pintura representaba el Desierto de Atacama, una de las regiones más importantes del mundo en cuanto a la minería del cobre; la escultura consistía en reproducciones de momias atacameñas. Los letreros de neón insertados en las momias exclamaban: “WELCOME (Bienvenido)”, “DE PASO” y “OPEN (Abierto).” Las palabras agregaban capas de significado esquivo a las desconcertantes imágenes de las momias, ofreciendo momentos para la reflexión sobre los recientes cambios sociopolíticos en Chile.

León Ferrari: Agitador de Formas, presentada en la Casa de las Américas, constituyó una especie de minirretrospectiva que confirmó la fuerza visual, material, conceptual y crítica de este multifacético creador. Planeta representaba un globo terráqueo cubierto por cucarachas de juguete. Los insectos, cada uno con una pequeña bandera adosada a su cuerpo, atravesaban en formación tierras y mares. ¿Dónde estaba la resistencia a esta invasión? ¡No parecía haberla!

Con la muerte como su musa, Martorell creó La Plena inmortal (2007), una muestra compuesta por planchas xilográficas representando imágenes de los grandes maestros de la historia del arte de las que se había apropiado y que había transformado por medio de insertar la imagen de un esqueleto como sujeto del retrato.[10] Con el humor y la sencillez que lo caracterizan, Martorell escribió: “Plena inmortal porque quien canta o invita a bailar es la muerte y nosotros los mortales bailamos al son que ella nos toca y cuando nos toque también. Ella, Plena, la mismísima muerte, es inmortal; nosotros mortales, pero mientras tanto, bailemos.”

Obras pertenecientes a las series de Martorell, junto con grabados en madera, linotipos y grabados de papa realizados por habitantes locales de todas las edades se instalaron por toda la Plaza de la Catedral el último día de la semana inaugural de la Bienal. Durante ese acontecimiento festivo, cientos de personas bailaron la plena en la plaza pública, donde se integraron el arte y la vida. Parece apropiado cerrar el presente artículo con este clima de celebración.

[1] Rubén del Valle Lantarón, director de la Bienal, escribió: “El término se ha convertido en uno de los más socorridos para analizar los fenómenos del mundo contemporáneo, sean estos de índole doméstica, ecológica, tecnológica, científica, política o cultural. Se trata de una nueva era donde los conflictos exceden los ya tradicionales ejes Norte-Sur, Este-Oeste, Capitalismo-Socialismo, para tornarse cuestiones que implican a todo el planeta por igual y donde en muchos casos se juega la supervivencia de la especie humana.” Décima Bienal Habana: Integration and Resistance in the Global Era. Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam. Consejo Nacional de las Artes Plásticas (2009), p. 17.

[2] Ver http://www.cubaencuentro.com/es/entrevistas/articulos/nadie-esta-dispuestoal- borron-y-cuenta-nueva-171188

3 Rubén Del Valle, comunicación vía correo electrónico con la autora, mayo 12, 2009.

4 Este campamento específico para el sitio tenía un atractivo visual similar al de la obra de Kaarina Kaikkonen Departure (2003), una instalación compuesta por 1500 chaquetas enrollándose en el viento y formando el perfil de un gran barco ubicado también en el mismo sitio dentro del foso seco.

5 Muy recientemente, el nuevo Gobierno de unidad nacional comenzó a autorizar la utilización de moneda extranjera en reemplazo de los dólares de Zimbabwe.

6 Un asterisco delante del nombre del artista indica que se trata de “un invitado especial.”

7 El padre de Aravena es chileno y su madre, palestina. Gran parte de la obra de la artista trata sobre problemas transculturales.

8 El artista participó en la muestra Punto de encuentro organizada por Kcho en el Convento de San Francisco (ver nota 2 más arriba).

9 Goméz Peña invitó a Tania Bruguera a colaborar en la creación de dos performances diferentes que supuestamente debían presentarse en simultáneo en patios separados pero próximos entre sí, en el primer piso del Centro Wifredo Lam. Por razones que desconozco, el público permaneció en su sitio durante la performance de Bruguera y luego se trasladó para participar en la de Goméz Peña. El artista se refiere a su elenco como la “chicubanaria”, en reconocimiento de su origen cubano, chicano, canario y español. Ver “Gómez Peña explica su posición frente a la ‘Controversia’ Tania Bruguera”, redactado en Ciudad de México el 13 de abril. Lo recibí del Centro Wifredo Lam el 24 de abril de 2009.

10 La Plena es una canción y baile muy popular que tiene su origen en Puerto Rico y sirve de narrativa a sucesos diversos que pueden ser tanto políticos como deportivos, o referidos a la crónica policial o a desastres naturales.

I published “Integration and Resistance in the Global Era: Personal Reflections, 10th Havana Biennial / Integración y Resistencia en la Era Global: Reflexiones Personales, 10a Bienal de Habana,” in Arte al día Internacional 128 (August-Oct. 2009): 71-81.

 VO Video by Yong Soon Min: email 5-20-09    © Yong Soon Min

 Yong Soon Min translated the voice-over for her video On the Road: Northern Exposure (2008) of the English text with subtitles in Korean and Spanish. The conversation by the artist to me was in an email dated 5-20-09 to me. I drew on her thoughts when I wrote the text that accompanied the video at the 10th Havana Biennial in 2009 when I was a consulting curator.

Hi Julia, 

Decided to send you the entire VO script and I've highlighted the last two paragraphs.  The entire text is narrated by me.    
Voice-over English text [is] translated into Korean and Spanish subtitles:

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual for one time

And only for one place

 In the English version of the film, “San Soleil,” by Chris Marker, this passage from T.S. Eliot’s 1930 poem, “Ash Wednesday” was quoted at the very beginning of his visual essay, as I do now.

 San Soleil recounts a journey that covers extensive territory – spanning Asia, Africa and North America.  Even though the film was made in 1982, it feels very contemporary in that our travel diaries now are likewise more inclined to reflect our ease of “leaving on a jet plane,” traversing continents.  The romance of the road has been displaced by air travel; instead of hours peering out car windows, we now peer out cabin windows through atmospheric clouds onto the distant terrain below.

I want to return now, to a time and a place where I was peering out the car window, with my video camera, on the roads in North Korea. 

 What spurred me to remember this 1998 trip was the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s best-known novel, “On the Road.” Just as it took me nearly a decade to reckon with this material, it also took Kerouac ten years to write the novel. Although he decided against his original intention to name the book “The Beat Generation,” the book nevertheless popularized the term. Beat was a slang term that originally referred to a condition of being beaten down, destitute; generally [feeling] down in the dumps.  But the tropes that got popularized were almost the opposite: that “beats” were optimistic, risk taking young folks who were seekers with a “desperate craving for belief.”  A case of manufactured idealism, a feel-good myth.

 Like most of his fans, when I first read the book and embraced the central character, Sal Paradise, I projected onto Kerouac and his book a romanticized notion that the book was an irreverent search for lost authenticity, an affirmation of being carefree and liberated from the confines of quotidian habits with a thirst for spontaneous exploration of the unknown and the nostalgia laden discoveries and revelations about being in the moment in a place.

 We now know the back-story that puts these projections into context. For starters, it took Kerouac four long-distance trips to write the book. The trips served his deliberate and arduous effort to produce a book.  The purpose of the trips was literature, not necessarily the discovery or the joys of being on the road.  The road was, in fact, a means to get somewhere and to get somewhere fast. We also know that in the last decade of his life, Kerouac withdrew into a bitter, confined existence with his mother, tortured, death-obsessed, alcoholic.

 How do I return to North Korea? How do I look at these images now? How do I make sense of the experience now? We were three female academics from California.  As we were driven in a new Nissan van around Pyongyang, to the DMZ and back by way of Kaesong on the bumpy roads, the blurred images of the many people we passed on the streets are suggestive of the frustrating sense of disconnect that I felt with the place and the people.  The only citizens we were allowed to know, somewhat, were those who were assigned to us – our minders. We spent most of our ten days with them with the full understanding that we’d never be in contact again. In fact, my memory of them now are not that much better than that of the blurred figures on the road.

 Actually, slow motion allows us a new insight into the blurred images. Watching it now, we get a sense of intimacy and connection that we craved during the trip but never fully realized. We can see now that some of the children waved to us.  I think we waved back.  I hope we did.  What did they see?  Is it we female foreigners or my big video camera that they were acknowledging? What did they think about us?  Do they remember us?

 According to the captured images, we are caught in the reciprocal act of looking, however fleeting it actually was.  A suspended state of affirmation?

 Is this the beginning of romance and myth-making? For instance, when I felt the sudden burst of sun rays, was I basking and lingering in the warmth of the glow that lasted a mere sliver of time, all the while, forgetting that the sunbursts were also momentarily blinding?

Recalling the Eliot poem, did our trip to North Korea reveal that “one place that was actual for one time, and only one place?” Even then, that place and time did not seem its own.  Perhaps the places we visited were claimed by too much history, too much back-story. Perhaps, it’s not just the travelers who are restless and transitory. Places are too.

After a long day on the road, nightfall seems abrupt.

Where did the road end?  

Because I know that time is always time

And place is always and only place

And what is actual is actual for one time

And only for one place

 In the English version of the film, “San Soleil,” by Chris Marker, this passage from T.S. Eliot’s 1930 poem, “Ash Wednesday” was quoted at the very beginning of his visual essay, as I do now.

 “San Soleil” recounts a journey that covers extensive territory – spanning Asia, Africa and North America.  Even though the film was made in 1982, it feels very contemporary in that our travel diaries now are likewise more inclined to reflect our ease of “leaving on a jet plane,” traversing continents.  The romance of the road has been displaced by air travel; instead of hours peering out car windows, we now peer out cabin windows through atmospheric clouds onto the distant terrain below.

 I want to return now, to a time and a place where I was peering out the car window, with my video camera, on the roads in North Korea. 

What spurred me to remember this 1998 trip was the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s best-known novel, “On the Road.” Just as it took me nearly a decade to reckon with this material, it also took Kerouac ten years to write the novel. Although he decided against his original intention to name the book “The Beat Generation,” the book nevertheless popularized the term. Beat was a slang term that originally referred to a condition of being beaten down, destitute; down in the dumps.  But the tropes that got popularized were almost the opposite: that “beats” were optimistic, risk taking young folks who were seekers with a “desperate craving for belief.”  A case of manufactured idealism, a feel-good myth.

 Like most of his fans, when I first read the book and embraced the central character, Sal Paradise, I projected onto Kerouac and his book a romanticized notion that the book was an irreverent search for lost authenticity, an affirmation of being carefree and liberated from the confines of quotidian habits with a thirst for spontaneous exploration of the unknown and the nostalgia laden discoveries and revelations about being in the moment in a place.

 We now know the back-story that puts these projections into context. For starters, it took Kerouac four long-distance trips to write the book. The trips served his deliberate and arduous effort to produce a book.  The purpose of the trips was literature, not necessarily the discovery or the joys of being on the road.  The road was, in fact, a means to get somewhere and to get somewhere fast. We also know that in the last decade of his life, Kerouac withdrew into a bitter, confined existence with his mother, tortured, death-obsessed, alcoholic.

How do I return to North Korea? How do I look at these images now? How do I make sense of the experience now? We were three female academics from California.  As we were driven in a new Nissan van around Pyongyang, to the DMZ and back by way of Kaesong on the bumpy roads, the blurred images of the many people we passed on the streets are suggestive of the frustrating sense of disconnect that I felt with the place and the people.  The only citizens we were allowed to know, somewhat, were those who were assigned to us – our minders. We spent most of our ten days with them with the full understanding that we’d never be in contact again. In fact, my memory of them now are not that much better than that of the blurred figures on the road.

 Actually, slow motion allows us a new insight into the blurred images. Watching it now, we get a sense of intimacy and connection that we craved during the trip but never fully realized. We can see now that some of the children waved to us.  I think we waved back.  I hope we did.  What did they see?  Is it we female foreigners or my big video camera that they were acknowledging? What did they think about us?  Do they remember us?

According to the captured images, we are caught in the reciprocal act of looking, however fleeting it actually was.  A suspended state of affirmation?

 Is this the beginning of romance and myth-making? For instance, when I felt the sudden burst of sun rays, was I basking and lingering in the warmth of the glow that lasted a mere sliver of time, all the while, forgetting that the sunbursts were also momentarily blinding?

Recalling the Eliot poem, did our trip to North Korea reveal that “one place that was actual for one time, and only one place?” Even then, that place and time did not seem its own. Perhaps the places we visited were claimed by too much history, too much back-story. Perhaps, it’s not just the travelers who are restless and transitory. Places are too.

After a long day on the road, nightfall seems abrupt.

Where did the road end?