Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

Performing Revolution 143
perhaps because of—this ideological and Wnancial backing, the project was
caught in the middle of a power struggle between the relatively liberal Hart
and Carlos Aldana, the secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in charge
of ideological matters. (This conXict had surfaced publicly with the censorship
of Tomás Esson’s solo exhibition at the 23 y 12 Gallery in Havana,
which was closed by neighborhood party ofWcials, over Hart’s objections.) 139
Arriving in Pilón, the artists immediately encountered strong resistance from
local party ofWcials and, although they remained for an extended period,
they were prevented from accomplishing much and, ultimately, were “counseled”
by ministry ofWcials that it was “advisable” that they withdraw. 140 While
not everyone was in agreement, several of the artists decided to leave, and
the project folded, “frustrated precisely because of the level of contradiction
that existed in the political structures there.” 141
Pilón was, probably not coincidentally, also the project that
brought the internal strains in the collective into sharper relief; this is not
surprising given the extremely tense conditions under which the group was
working. But it also seems likely that these internal tensions resulted from
the fact that the artists were working in even more unknown territory, and
thus there was less background consensus about what they were trying to
accomplish. 142 Perhaps for this reason, the group’s interactions with the local
public were relatively limited, despite the original plan: they did work together
on some things, most notably an exhibition of more or less documentary
nature about the realities of life in Pilón (which was censured), 143 but
it seems to have been primarily the interactions among the artists that were
the project’s axis. Ironically, once art’s “other” was allowed to be truly other,
rather than just a revised version of art, the collective collapsed into a conversation
with itself.
In the end, it was the day-to-day experience of life in Pilón, more
than the aesthetic experience, that had the most impact on the artists. They
were shocked by the poverty they saw, and by the level of anger against the
revolution, in a zone that was supposedly the beneWciary of a special plan
for rural development and that had special signiWcance in revolutionary history.
144 The utopian plan of making art in Pilón had disintegrated in the
midst of this situation and the Werce political inWghting that they had been
caught in, and their idea of art, inevitably, changed: as Saavedra noted, “many
of my utopias crumbled too: it diminished me somewhat . . . or I was a little
more realistic about the transformative capacity of art.” 145 As long as art
had remained within the sphere of Art, it was possible to hold utopian expectations
for its transformative power. However, there was a double exit from
the precinct of Art: one was into a practice no longer divorced from political
activity and the other was to Pilón, outside the realm of a deWnable,