Panel: Cuba on my browser

Classified Information: Advertising and Secrecy in Cuban Underground e-Commerce

Adrian Lopez-Denis, University of Delaware

Relative to the size of the population, the island has one of the lowest numbers of Internet users and mobile phone subscribers in the region. Some anecdotic evidence suggests, however, that for the first time in decades, young men and women from Havana share with their most globalized counterparts many of the same cultural references and consumer ideals. This presentation is an attempt to map out such a referential universe through a combination of in-depth interviews and surveys centered on the media consumption habits of young Cubans. In order to explore the ways in which global media products manage to impact these people, the presentation includes a study of the offerings available in formal and informal media markets. Particular attention is paid to the sellers and buyers of pirated media operating on the streets as well as through semi-virtual distribution channels such as the classified advertisements website Revolico.

The Unbearable Materiality of Socialism

Maria Cabrera Arus, The New School University

This presentation will focus on Cuban material culture, surveying some areas of the domestic space and fashion during the 1970s and 1980s and commenting on her U.S.-based digital project Cuba Material, conceived as an archive and discussion space on Cuban materiality, especially focusing on the socialist era.

Horizontes de Cobre. Presentación del CD de Poesía Electrónica

Kevin Beovides Casas, Independent Scholar

La curaduría que se trae a vuestra consideración toma la forma de un CD titulado Poesía Electrónica v1.0. Está compuesta por doce obras y otros tantos artículos teóricos, de un total de nueve autores. La curaduría fue realizada teniendo en cuenta tanto el calibre de los autores como el objeto final del CD, que consiste en divulgar una novedosa práctica artística con la que apenas han tenido contacto los espectadores cubanos. Durante la presentación se abordarán también algunos conceptos y otras aristas de índole teórica relacionadas con la curaduría y, en general, la creación cubana dentro de la rama de los nuevos medios.

Discussant: Jacqueline Loss, University of Connecticut

Bios:

Adrián López-Denis specializes in the history of Latin America from colonial times to the present, with a focus on the relationship between medicine and slavery in the Spanish Caribbean. At the University of Havana he received a B.S. in Biology, a B.A in Library Sciences and an M.A. in Latin American Studies. He also earned an M.A. in Economics from Carleton University. After completing his Ph.D. in Latin American History at UCLA, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in International Humanities at Brown University. His current project examines how colonial practitioners working with soldiers, sailors, and slaves contributed to the modernization of Western medicine across the Iberian Atlantic World during the Age of Revolution.

María A. Cabrera Arús is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the New School for Social Research. In Cuba, she worked at ONDI, the National Bureau of Industrial Design, promoting the discipline and researching the history of design in the country. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the politics of material culture in Cuban socialism during the 1970s and 1980s. María A. Cabrera Arús also runs the blog Cuba Material (cubamaterial.com), conceived in 2012 as an archive of objects and practices related to the material culture in Cuba, with a strong emphasis in the socialist period.

Kevin Beovides Casas. Licenciado de Filosofa, en la Universidad de la Habana, en el año 2004. Desde este mismo año y hasta el año 2011, se desempeñó como profesor de Estética y Arte, en la Universidad de las Artes de Cuba, I.S.A., donde llegó a ser jefe del colectivo de Estética y Arte. Master en Historia del Arte, en la Universidad de la Habana, en el año 2011. Ha cursado numerosos talleres artísticos de literatura, guión cinematográfico y fotografía. Fundador del proyecto "El Diletante Digital", http://www.eldiletante.com, en el curso 2006-2007, que en el contexto de Cuba puede considerarse el esfuerzo artístico en Internet más abarcador y primero en su tipo. Ha impartido los talleres de Net.Art y Literatura Digital, "Cómo ser Vuk Cosic en 3 Pasos Fáciles" y "Hacking Lily". Ha participado como ponente en múltiples eventos, entre los que se encuentran el "3er Seminario Bienal Internacional de Complejidad 2006" (2006), el "Quinto Coloquio Internacional de Estética y Arte" (2007), el "1er Festival Internacional de Narradores Jóvenes" (2008), y el VI Coloquio Internacional de Estética y Arte (2009). Ha sido incluido en múltiples exposiciones, como las siguientes, Exposición "Cambio y Fuera", colateral a la X Bienal de la Habana (2009), "El extremo de la Bala. Una Década de Arte Cubano" (Pabellón Cuba, 2010), "Torbellino II" (Galería Habana, 2011), "Luz a tu propia química" (Fundación Ludwig, 2011) y "Ruido Rosa" (Galería Luz y Oficio, 2011). Ha sido premiado con las becas de creación "El Caballo de Coral" (2004) y Juan Francisco Elso (2009).

Panel: Departures and destinations of Tania Bruguera´s art

Acclaimed visual artist Tania Bruguera talks about her work. 

Introduced by Rafael Rojas (Princeton University).

Panel discussion with Professors Gabriela Nouzeilles, Ruben Gallo and Rachel Price.

To see the video, follow this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vlgv7pygm646y7p/Beyond%20The%20Hyphen%20-Tania%20Bruguera.mp4?dl=0

Panel: Impossible Features of Identity in Contemporary Music, Literature and the Visual Arts

Beyond the hyphen: Transnational and Alternative Cubanidades
Eva Silot Bravo, University of Miami

My paper examines the circulation of cultural narratives in diasporic music networks and among some authors of the Novísimos generation in Cuba resulting from the economic crisis of the early nineties to the present. I argue that the 1990s Transnational Alternative refers to aesthetic and generational scenes that straddle cultural fields like music and literature resulting in “in-between” spaces of creativity in which narratives about the Cuban nation and cubanidad are reconfigured. I put in dialogue less visible narratives from the hardly explored music scene of transnational collaborations among Cuban singers, songwriters and jazz musicians with two novels by Novísimos generation authors: Pedro Juan Gutiérrez’s Trilogía sucia de la Habana (1998) and Ena Lucía Portela’s Cien botellas en una pared (2003), in search for common narratives and/or aesthetics that project the possibility of a generational voice across different cultural fields bolstered by the nineties crisis. The research locates itself in the academic conversation about the impact of transnational practices on the reconstruction of narratives on nations and national identities in a global context, as well as on postmodern inquires about a post-national condition.

Señales frías: sobre algunas escrituras desnaturalizas

Walfrido Dorta, CUNY

¿Hacia dónde señalan algunos textos muy recientes escritos por cubanos? ¿Es posible pensar desde ellos alguna condición “post”, como la postgeográfica, propuesta como marco general del evento? Y, en todo caso, ¿cuáles serían los límites de esa posible marca de posterioridad? Quisiera interrogar textos de Carlos A. Aguilera, Gerardo Fernández Fe y Javier Marimón a partir de estas preguntas. ¿Qué se coloca en estas escrituras en el lugar de la borradura o el desplazamiento de Cuba?

Features of Identity in Contemporary Cuban Cultural Production

Odette Casamayor, University of Connecticut

Discussant: Lizabel Monica, Princeton University

Bios:

Cuban-born scholar and writer Odette Casamayor-Cisneros is Associate Professor at the University of Connecticut-Storrs. Her book Utopia, Dystopia and Ethical Weightlessness: Cosmological reconfigurations in post-Soviet Cuban Fiction has been published by Iberoamericana/Vervuert, May 2013.She is currently working on a new book On Being Black: Racial Self-identification Processes in Post-Soviet Cuban Cultural Production. Odette Casamayor is also the author of the book of short stories, Una casa en los Catskills, San Juan, La Secta de los Perros, 2011.

Walfrido Dorta realiza su doctorado en el programa Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages en el Graduate Center (CUNY), sobre literatura latinoamericana y caribeña del siglo XX. Se concentra  en la relación entre ideología, intelectuales y literatura. Le interesa la historia intelectual y la teoría crítica. Ha publicado un libro sobre Gastón Baquero (El testigo y su lámpara…, 2001), y recientemente un texto sobre los escritores del grupo Diáspora(s) en la edición facsímil de la revista homónima, además de otros ensayos en revistas culturales y académicas. Planea hacer su investigación doctoral sobre dinámicas culturales en Cuba de los últimos 30 años, y algunos proyectos como Paideia, Diáspora(s), y su relación con el Estado.

Eva Silot-Bravo is a Phd. Candidate/ ABD. in Modern Languages and Literatures at University of Miami. Independent Blogger and Journalist. Collaborator to online magazines like Cubaencuentro (Madrid) and Timba.com (L.A.). Former diplomat and international negotiator in United Nations.  My current research interests are focused in: Cultural Studies; Narratives of Post-Socialist and Transnational Identities; Alternative Cultural Networks; Popular Music; and the Transnational Cuban Alternative Music Scene (TCAMS). Cultural promoter, experienced in Media Relations and Cultural Events Production. M.A. in International Studies from Florida International University; and B.A. in International Relations from University of Havana. Formal training in Piano and Classical Music in Havana.