Diango Hernández

b. 1970, Cuba

In 1994 I started my research of the Cuban crisis that began in the late 1980s. Studying objects and artifacts that people were creating to survive the impact of the crisis allowed me to give shape to a ‘museum’ that paid testimony to that crisis. Later, this research raised many questions for me, not only about the crisis as a theme, but also about art in general. What kind of role does the artist play in the political-social-economic realm he is living in? Is art relevant enough to bring any solution to a specific political issue? Is the art system fast enough to dialogue in real time with our now?

Two ordinary street lamps are permanently blinking; they seem to have functioning problems. They are, in fact, responding to sound impulses coming from a sound trigger, which is connected to an MP3 player playing a speech by Fidel Castro. Each of the street lamps is connected to a different speech from a different time. Blackouts were very common during the 1990s in Cuba; complete cities were without electricity for 24, and sometimes 48 hours. By the mid-’90s the blackouts were systematised and the cities divided into different zones with independent blackouts. From one of the highest buildings in Havana, I used to see a ‘blinking’ city, full neighbourhoods becoming black holes while others were transformed into universes full of little stars. A whole city was affected by a big political error. The president as a master DJ was using our city as his club, playing in repeat mode his bites of fear and darkness.

(Text: reading the city catalogue, 2009)