Connecting La Havana - Project outline

La Havana, September 10 - 25 2010

TIME_FRAME/ NIMK project
Director Heiner Holtappels
Curator TIME_FRAME Miguel Petchkovsky
Invited curator Curator Lucrezia Cippitelli
Lecturers Miguel Petchkovsky, Lucrezia Cippitelli
Artist invited Raul Ferrera Balanquet

Connecting La Havana is a long-term project which aims to open a platform for media and video in La Habana, involving local art institutions, artists and independent collectives of producers. The first step of the platform was the two weeks visit and organization of workshops on video making, which took place in September 2010. Connecting La Havana #1 has been supported by Mondriaan Foundation and Prince Claus Fond.



The intensive workshops leaded to the production of a series of videos realized with the support of the TIME FRAME team in La Havana. The team visited the main local institutions dedicated to contemporary art of the city: the Centro Wilfredo Lam (headquarter of the Havana Biennale) and the Instituto Superior de Arte - ISA, the main post graduate school of at and one of the more advanced educational institutions of art in all Latin America.
 

Lectures, presentations, visits to local artists and several meetings took place within the two weeks, in different places of the city, while the two main workshops and production lab took place in Alamar. The basic objective of the project was to associate the practice performance in public spaces with video art, using as departing point the peripheral area of Alamar, a banlieu of Havana.



The main recipients of the workshop have been artists belonging to the former collective Omni Zonafranca (today dispersed in other production groups as Garaje 19, Acetato Producciones) and independent artists operating in La Havana in the context of video making and activism in public spaces (to name few: René Francisco, Raydel Araoz, Minerva Romero Regalado, Ailer Gonzales, the students of the ISA part of the IV Pragmatica initiated by René Francisco).
 



Time Frame also established a long term relationship and a fruitful exchange of ideas with the collective of curators of Havana Biennale (next edition will take place in Havana on Spring 2012). The director Jorge Fernandez and the curatorial collective of the Centro Wilfredo Lam (Dannys Montes de Oca, Pepe Fernandez Portal, Margarita Sanchez Prieto to name some of them), hosted a two days presentation of video works from the collection of NIMk. Time Frame shared the idea to initiate a media workshop in collaboration with the Centro Wilfredo Lam, which will point to a significant artistic and conceptual contribution to the next Havana Biennale.



Besides the institutional activities and the workshops, we also met other interesting artists, which we plan to involve in future common projects undertaken between La Habana and Amsterdam: Fidel Garcia, conceptual artist using since the beginnings of the 2000’s old and new technologies in the context of public spaces, as critique of systems, institutions and control; the collective of the Observatorio Critico, a group focused on the critique of daily life through public interventions, organization of events, conferences, educational projects and urban renovations programs, realized using institutional cultural Cuban spaces with and activist attitude.


Details of the Workshops
- Lecture by Raul Ferrera Balaquet at the Instituto Superior de Arte - Isa;
- Lecture by Miguel Petchkovsky at the Instituto Superior de Arte ISA: screenings
NIMk collection;


- Lecture Miguel Petchkovsky video art from Africa and Lucrezia Cippitelli on new media practices and postcolonial theories for the group mentored by René Francisco “Pragmática Collective” students from the Instituto Superior de Arte ISA in Francisco's private studio.
Participant artists:
Amanda Alonso del Rio, Hamlet Armas, Ivan Arturo Torrez, Nelson Barrera, Marta J. Borrell, Joaquin Cabrera, Guillermo Cardenas, Fidel Castro Cabello, Jenny Feal, Osvaldo Ferrer, Yamisleisy Garcia, Dania Gonzalez, Yeremy Guerra, Jorge Pablo Lima, Leonardo Ruis Roque, Arianna Moreno, Ana Raquel Ocequera, Alejandra Oliva, Karlos Perez, Orlando Perez, Victor Piverno, Yaime Rodriguez, Pablo Rosendo, Aylen Russinyol, Dayana Trigo, Ruth M. Trueba, Leonel Valdes, Yoxi Velazques, Giselle Viamonte, Anabel A. Zenea

- Lecture 3 days Raul Ferrera Balanquet, workshop with Omni Zonafranca
- Lecture by Lucrezia Cippitelli, workshop Omni Zonafranca
- Lecture workshop and screenings of Montevideo collection Miguel Pechkovsky.
Participant artists: David Escalona Carillo, Raydel Araoz, Ailer Gonzalez Mena, Ivia Perez Naranjo, Nilo Julián González, Luis Eligio Pérez, Yuri Obregón Batard, Amaury Pacheco del Monte, Alina Guzmán, Anais Tirana, Eduardo Pis.

- Lectures by Miguel Petchkovsky and Lucrezia Cippitelli to the group Garage 19,
with video screenings from Brazilian, African and NIMk collection.
Participant artists: Jorge Perez (Yoyi), Minerva Romero Regalado, Adolfo Cabrera Perez (Fito), Mirian Real Arci, Osmani Padron.