Guest professor, Raul Ferrera Balanquet

Connecting La Habana had the opportunity and the pleasure to invite as participant artist and guest professor Raul Ferrera Balanquet, Cuban independent film maker, video artist, and writer based in Mexico.
In the last 30 years, Ferrera Balanquet had practiced as artist, curator, intellectual and scholar an intense critique of the systems of representation of gender, race and power in a global scale, starting with his personal story of homosexual and latino which in 1980 had to choose the exile from Cuba. Ferrera lived and studied in the U, where he obtained an MFA in Video and Multimedia in the beginning of the Nineties), participated to the intellectual production of a generation of Latin American artists which moved to the US (Ana Mendieta and Coco Fusco to name few) and developed his art practice based on film making and new media as pioneer.

Later, Ferrera moved back to Latin America, in Merida (Mexico), where he established the Biennale "Arte Nuevo Interactiva", which since the end of the Nineties constructed an extensive platform for the reflection, production and valorization of video and media art from the Latin American continent. "Arte Nuevo Interactiva", which invited several curators and artists from all over the world and got, during the years, a growing international attention, is the platform where Ferrera developed his concept of “post-technological future” based on the comprehension of the Latin American ancestors cultures.

Ferrera’s presentation of his work and screening of his videos, has been a strong and definitely valuable element to improve the intellectual approach of the participants of the workshop.

Lectures: ISA (Instituto Superior de Arte); Alamar, working space of Omni Zonafranca collective.