How long have you been blind
Anna Lusser, 8 February 2024
How Long Have You Been Blind
February 2024
Anna Lusser, student of Applied Human Rights, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Standing on the streets of Vienna, somewhere in the seventh district—it's quite a busy and hip neighbourhood—you stop in front of an inconspicuous gray front, wondering what might lie behind. A small ‘e’ shines brightly from the upper left corner of the entryway. Suddenly, someone on the phone, immersed in a conversation in Spanish, rushes by and enters the doorway you were just looking at. You hear them talking about a gallery exhibition about Cuba - which makes you think, maybe dream of the country people know everything and nothing about. You question what comes into your own mind. Do you see the sun, colorful cars, beautiful buildings, maybe the beach? You get curious and follow the person inside, where you discover some sort of gallery called ‘ENTRE’. By entering, you are invited to take off your blindfolds to encounter a different world - welcome to Cuban reality.
How long have you been blind is realized by the Cuban art collective Forma Foco, which is forced to live in exile due to the political situation in Cuba. With their work they have one goal - opening eyes by telling their reality, not only the eyes of exhibition goers, but hopefully of the world. According to Forma Foco member and co-founder, Julio Llopiz-Casal, the world has to look closer and listen to Cuban voices:
‘Sixty-three years after the Cuban Revolution began, a large part of global society continues to buy into Fidel Castro's marketing strategy. Cubans need to speak for themselves and be heard, but what generally happens is that they do not have access to that dialogue because Europeans consider that the Communist Party speaks for the people: they do not try to check if there is something wrong with that’.
The exhibition includes works from Hassan-Quintela collective, Camila Lobón, Kiko Faxas and Yimit Ramírez and is shown from 14 November 2023 until 12 February 2024 at ENTRE, an independently-run project space in Vienna. As the director and co-curator of the exhibition Marilyn Volkman described, the space focuses on ‘sparking conversation about Human Rights issues through international exchange in the context of Vienna, which as a world city and UN base, and a great place to speak from’.
To understand the motivation of the exhibition, some background information is necessary: in 2018, a newly introduced law (Decree 349) extremely restricted artistic freedom in Cuba and had severe impacts and limitations in the activity as an artist. Also for this reason, Cuban creators and activists started to join forces and protest against the law. These demonstrations had the effect that the law was partially without effect and showed the power of a community which holds together. The exhibition looks to the past, more precisely to an incisive event, which is strongly connected to the legislative changes that shape current Cuba: the islandwide protests of 2021, colloquially known in Cuba as 11J. On July 11th, 2021, thousands of Cuban people gathered in order to protest against the government specifically regarding the economy and shortages of medicine, as well as freedom of expression. That protest grew to be one of the largest anti-government uprisings since the revolution in 1959. However, the protest was violently stopped by the government and led to ‘1,878 arrests, of which still 1,052 are still in prison and around 400,000 people have been leaving their country’.1 Carlos Quintela, one of the artists who is forced to call this his reality finds apt words: ‘We are fragments of Cuba, fragments living in different places trying to show the world the Cuban reality’.
The artists have been using emerging technologies including artificial intelligence to show and produce (their) reality, which they can now only perceive from far away while living in exile. The goal shared by the exhibition’s works is to use and combine real and analog data with audio-visuals generated with Ai. For example, in the work 11J.db_data-sonification, the artist Kiko Faxas worked with content from the Justicia 11J database, which is a platform collecting data from political prisoners in Cuba, as the basis for an experimental music composition. Another work, by Camila Lobon, uses Polaroid photography to create analog proof of a situation which has been staged using artificial intelligence.
left: Untitled: 11J.db_data-sonification, Kiko Faxas, 2023 | right: Monument to be torn down, Camila Ramirez Lobón, 2023 | photo: Hager Eissa Abdallah Mohammed
The mix of audio-visual technology and artificial perception, invites and forces the audience to enter into an interactive experience. This interaction was most viscerally experienced in Yimit Ramírez’ work, Caribbean Jacuzzi”, which recreates a situation inspired and based on the most iconic photo taken during the 11J protests. The image becomes immersive when can be discovered through virtual reality glasses. These send the visitors back to the day of the protest to discover what happened while moving, walking, crawling and searching within the seemingly empty gallery space. While the audience moves within the virtual world, they cannot really see what is happening in the rest of the room. And so did the artist mention while explaining the process and idea of the artwork, that it is now not only Cuban artists, but also the audience, who ‘performs within the blind’.
Caribbean Jacuzzi, Yimit Ramírez, 2021-23
You are now leaving ‘ENTRE, stepping out on the busy streets of Vienna, people rushing past you, and you are back in reality - in your reality. However, now it is on you, if you want to put your blindfolds back on or not.
___________________
1 Exhibition Pamphlet ‘How long have you been blind’, Entre and Forma Foco, 2023.
IG: forma.foco & entre_vienna
How long have you been blind — ENTRE | Burggasse 24/4 | 1070 Vienna
Exhibition Artworks:
Collective Hassan - Quintela
Artificial perception on Cuba 1.0
2023. Video installation.
Video_1 | 1:1 / 11 min (Loop). 4K / Cuban migrants: Julián Martínez | Víctor Cruz & Video_2 | Generative Art. 16:9. / 6 min (Loop). 4K. / Cuban migrants: Julián Martínez | Víctor Cruz.
Our art arises at a crucial point where traditional film techniques meet the avant-garde of artificial intelligence. We use this fusion to deepen the cinematic canvas, creating a digital mosaic that immerses viewers in the nuanced reality of Cuba, both on the island and throughout its diaspora.
In this endeavor, our vision is to challenge and disturb the monochromatic narrative that has long defined the Cuban experience, one deeply rooted in the revolutionary myth. Our art serves as a portal to the multiple layers of Cuban life, exposing the intricate stories eclipsed by the official narrative.
Beyond the realm of cinema, we find refuge in the visual arts, a sanctuary for cinematic practices that, due to their commercial nature, are at risk of disappearing. In the visual arts, these practices find a bastion for their growth, merging with new media and transhuman artistic practices that are emblematic of our millennium.
We invite our audience to venture beyond the veil of the facade that has been exported from Cuba. By intertwining the genuine textures of everyday Cuban life with the expansive potential of new media, we create a narrative that resonates with the profound unrest of the current Cuban experience. Our artistic work is not merely a revelation but a dialogue, a challenge to the established order, and a means to build bridges of understanding about the experiences of a people, both domestically and globally. By stripping away the layers tied to a revolutionary past, we share the dynamic tapestry of Cuban identity, an evolving narrative as diverse and vibrant as the people who continue to weave it.
Camila Ramirez Lobón
Monument to be torn down (First versión)
2023, Installation, 6 photos polaroid, Variable dimensions.
When Fidel Castro Ruz died on November 25, 2016, he expressed his desire that no monuments be erected in his name. This prohibition is not surprising considering the fate suffered by the images of the leaders of similar autocratic processes in other countries. The leader, who remained in power, wanted to avoid the image of his public defenestration. Iconoclasm is a powerful language of reparation and historical reflection, and it is from this that this work is conceived. I have simulated, in a post-totalitarian Cuba, the construction of a monument to the dictator to be demolished as a fair tribute to his legacy.
Kiko Faxas
Untitled: 11J.db_data-sonification
2022. Sound installation. Puredata patch: sound enhancement of political prisoners database in Cuba.
The piece is a sound recording of the database of Cuban political prisoners who were linked to the popular protests of July 11 and 12, 2021 in all the provinces of the country. The work was composed exactly one year after these events occurred.
To carry it out, some of the most relevant fields of the database have been mapped to certain musical parameters. For example, the province of Havana corresponds to the different notes of a violin in pizzicato, the duration of the sentencing (read, years in prison) with the tempo (that is, the speed) at which the database is scanned, and the type of sentencing "Deprivation of Liberty" with the sounds of a prepared piano, etc. In general, the timbral palette used for the mapping process corresponds to the instrumental sounds of a modern symphony orchestra (for more information on this you can consult the attached files that appear in the './info/' folder).
Although it is evident that the purpose of the gesture is not intended to be in any way scientific, but rather symbolic; There are certain elements that can be perceived very clearly in a listening process. Among others, the age of prisoners at the time of their arrest has been correlated with panning: that is, the sound events of detainees under 30 years of age appear more displaced towards the left ear in the stereo panorama, while those of older than 30 are shown further to the right. The fact that an aural balance is perceived between both channels implies, therefore, that there is a more or less equal (or uniform) distribution between the number of protesters that comprises the generational range that goes from 12 to 29 years old, and the number of protesters whose age range ranges between 30 and 75 years.
Yimit Ramírez
Caribbean Jacuzzi, 2021-2023.
Sculpture. Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality. Oculus. Variable dimensions.
Caribbean Jacuzzi stands as a complex augmented reality installation, where the visible and the invisible interlace to challenge our grasp of reality and history. Stepping into the exhibition space, what is merely a void adorned with Polaroid snapshots on the walls to some, becomes a field of discovery that defies perception and awareness for others.
Rooted in the symbolic power of Cuba's July 11th movement, the work uses augmented reality glasses as a gateway to a hidden dimension. The room, initially perceived in full color by the naked eye, takes on a monochrome hue through the lenses—save for the vibrant digital sculpture that bursts forth with the intensity of that which must not be forgotten: an overturned police car and a youth brandishing the Cuban flag.
The act of looking through the glasses is not merely a visual act, but a gesture of revelation and complicity. Those equipped with the glasses are led to reflection and inquiry, encouraged to explore and uncover, to dive into an alternative reality where they can interact with the hidden elements of the artwork. The piece blurs the lines between art and viewer, between knowledge and ignorance, creating a dual space of performance where each action can be interpreted diversely depending on the level of perception.
Transcending physical and digital space, Caribbean Jacuzzi becomes a visceral experience that plays with the notion of what lies before us and what we choose to see. It invites viewers to question narratives not just within the island of Cuba but in their very understanding of the world, thus forging a silent dialogue between those who know the truth behind the installation and those yet to discover it. With each spectator that enters and moves through the room, the work accrues new layers of meaning, constructing a collective performance where augmented and physical realities collide, generating a potent reflection on the duality of perception and the responsibility of knowledge.