Interview with Tania Bruguera

Abstract

In late December 2014, the artist Tania Bruguera was arrested after attempting to carry out an unsanctioned performance centred on freedom of speech in Revolution Square, Havana, Cuba. She was released after three days but held in the country indefinitely until a decision regarding legal action by the government was determined. In the weeks and months that followed, Bruguera dealt with legal issues and additional arrests, diplomatic contestations surrounding her confiscated passport, along with interrogations and intimidation by the Cuban government. It was not until July 2015 that her passport was returned. In mid-August, with a letter securing her diplomatic status as a Cuban citizen in hand, she returned to the United States. Due to her detention, Bruguera participated remotely as a speaker at the College Art Association session, The Ethics of Social Practice, reading a paper through a cellphone on Arte Útil and Aest-ethics (taken, along with other belongings by the Cuban authorities). I invited her to revisit her position on ethics and Arte Útil, and her work generally, in the form of an interview for this journal, to which she graciously agreed.

Shapeshifting and Boundary Crossings of Socially Engaged Art

“…For the last three years, I have been operating an open art studio at an urban shelter for homeless and impoverished women in New England, USA. As mentioned earlier, its many ontological roots include a community service, my version of what Bruguera calls arte utíl (Sollins, 2014, S. Wright, 2013, meaning useful art. As such, it is a performative artwork-my art education fieldwork, artistic research, and spiritual practice.…”

“…It seems necessary for social art to be examined in relation to its changing context, that is, to consider its presence as a situated process, remembering that art as context is also present when other aspects of life, social and personal, are newly envisioned as material for artistic process and actions (Rikou, 2018). Artist Bruguera argued (Sollins, 2014) that artists engaged in the spirit of arte utíl use their art as an instrument of social change, and "incorporate themselves as artists and civic servants into that [social] reality, with the knowledge that art can change some of those paradigms" (Sollins, 2014, para 3). Arte utíl can be described as operating on the "1:1 scale practice of usership" (S. Wright, 2013 p. 26), at all times retaining its double ontology.…”

“…Another more practical form finds artists using their social responsibility to engage directly with others to effect change. As Bruguera suggested (Sollins, 2014), specializing in creativity to imagine a different reality, building it, and making it exist for others is the work of the social artist. Despite all of this effort at legitimation, the question of social intervention taken to be an aesthetic achievement (Robbins, 2015) will continue to persist and trouble, and despite the perennial demonstration of its validity, social art will still be seen in some milieus as "optimism for political efficacy in the real world" (Robbins, 2015, p.177), or fledgling attempts at effective activism.…”