Nick [echtgenoot] and I go to a performance of Tania Bruguera, plus a show of the works of fifteen other artists at the Faculty of Arts and Letters. It is one of the shows that is not part of, but is taking place around, the Havana Biennial.
The artists who are in the show lie in a circle on the floor. Tania, dressed vaguely as a sheep, walks on the bodies, planting red flags on them as she walks. At each body, she also binds either their mouths, their eyes, their hands, or their feet with red cloth. She then steps out into the audience, planting red flags and binding mouths, eyes, hands, and feet.
Alexis Esquivel has a piece in the show called The Machine for the Fabrication of Tradition. It consists of a row of Plexiglas boxes filled to varying degrees with water. A fighting fish is in each box. Above each box, a tube leading from a suspended intravenous bag drips water. Soon the fullest box will overflow, carrying a fighting fish with it into the adjacent box, to fight with the other fighting fish until death.
In a room marked 'ladies room' there is a small bronze statue of a guajiro [boer, plattelander] astride a giant penis — his own, but three times the size of his body. The foreskin is pulled back, and out of the head of the penis sprout the antennae of a snail. Testicles trail out the back. It is a plan for a monumental sculpture to be mounted at the entrance to the art school. There is a blown-up photograph of the sculpture, glued onto a photo of the entrance to the art school, so that you can see how it will look.
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