Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

154 Rachel Weiss
67. Personal possessions were also sold or bartered on a private level: in desperation,
Cubans have traded in their furniture, cutlery, paintings, picture frames, statues
on the family crypt, garden ornaments, and now even their books, which are
resold (mostly to tourists) by street dealers in the old city.
68. Glexis Novoa, interview with the author, Miami, December 30, 2002.
69. Aldo Damián Menéndez, “Art Attack: The Work of ARTECALLE,” in Corpus
Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas, ed. Coco Fusco (London: Routledge,
2000), 277.
70. Ibid., 278.
71. Ernesto Leal, interview with the author, Havana, March 18, 2002.
72. In “The Masked Philosopher” Michel Foucault makes a wonderful suggestion
about the value of anonymity: “Why have I suggested that I remain anonymous? Out
of nostalgia for the time when, being completely unknown, what I said had some
chance of being heard. The surface contact with some possible reader was without
a wrinkle.” Michel Foucault, “The Masked Philosopher,” in Foucault Live (New York:
Semiotext(e), 1989, 1996), 302.
73. Galería L, Havana, October 13, 1987. Participating artists included Pedro
Vizcaíno, Erick Gómez, Hugo Azcuy, Iván Alvarez, Ernesto Leal, Max Delgado, Alán
González, OWll Echevarría, and Ariel Serrano.
74. The title quotes from a patriotic poem by Mirta Aguirre, which suggests that
Che should not be reduced to history or to conveniently edited aspects of his revolutionary
work, meanwhile leaving aside the ethical demands that he set as his revolutionary
example.
75. Frency Fernández Rosales has blamed this provocation on the Group on
Human Rights headed by Ricardo BoWll in “La vocación inconclusa: Notas sobre
Arte Calle,” in Enema 2 y 3 (Havana: Instituto Superior de Arte, 2000), 49.
76. Editorial de la redacción de la culture, “Arte es huir de lo mezquino, y aWrmarse
en lo grande,” Juventud Rebelde (Havana), October 1987.
77. “Ud. se equivocó de exposición,” unpublished typescript, October 1987, 4.
Signed by Hugo Azcuy, Iván Alvarez, Max Delgado, OfWl Echevarría, Erick Gómez,
Alán González, Ernesto Leal, Ariel Serrano, and Pedro Vizcaíno.
78. In the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, Chapter 4, Article 38, section
d reads: “artistic creativity is free as long as its content is not contrary to the Revolution.
Forms of expression of art are free.”
79. In this, there is an interesting echo of Brazilian Tropicalismo at the end of the
1960s, which also struck a position somewhere in between counterculture and orthodox
left, incorporating the former and distancing itself from the latter. On Christmas
Day 1968, Caetano Veloso appeared on TV and sang a sentimental Brazilian
Christmas song while holding a gun to his head. He and other tropicalistas were subsequently
“invited” to go into exile.
80. Grupo Provisional is identiWed by Camnitzer as consisting primarily of Glexis
Novoa, Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas, and Segundo Planes, with Planes as a much less
active partner. In fact, Planes does not list the Grupo Provisional activities on his
resumé (the reference here is to the catalog for his major exhibition in 1993 at the
Galería Ramis Barquet). According to Novoa the group was formed by him, Cárdenas,
and Francisco Lastra.
81. Glexis Novoa, interview with the author, Miami, December 30, 2002.
82. Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas, untitled grant application, 1997.
83. Glexis Novoa, interview with the author, Miami, December 30, 2002. The