Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt

The Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR) was born out of an artistic action in Havana, Cuba, when, in May 2015, the artist and activist Tania Bruguera held a collective reading of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) in what are now INSTAR’s headquarters. For 100 hours, people recited and discussed Arendt’s classic study of totalitarian regimes, which is highly relevant to Cuba today.

Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR), Art to the limit, Workshop with the theoretician Brian Holmes and the artist Claire Pentecost, Havana, 2017, Photo: INSTAR

This action was the culmination of the #YoTambiénExijo campaign, which Bruguera initiated with a group of Cuban citizens in 2014–2015. They demanded transparency from the Cuban regime about conversations that established bilateral relations between Cuba and the United States during the terms of Raul Castro and Barack Obama, respectively. In an unprecedented event, within a few days, more than 20,000 people gathered on a public platform, activating a genuine civic campaign using social media. From that moment, the cultural sector became an agent of socio-political change in Cuba.

INSTAR—an acronym, and also a verb meaning “to encourage,” “to instigate,” or  “to incite”—works at the fault lines between artistic practice and activism. The institute’s main objectives are the promotion of civic literacy and social justice in Cuba. Operating collectively and by consensus, it creates a model of institutionality guided by freedom of expression, the observance of human rights, and the fulfillment of labor rights such as fair working hours and wages, zero tolerance to discrimination, and favorable working environments for single-parent families. INSTAR is a space that generates content through programming, developed through social networks and at its Havana headquarters: it institutes and promotes awards and scholarships for the financial support of independent practice on the island; and it aims for the restitution of historical memory through public programs and the archive created for this purpose.

For documenta fifteen, INSTAR presents a counter-narrative of Cuban cultural history, installed between Havana and Kassel. The project takes as a point of departure the Russian constructivist poet, journalist, and playwright Sergei Tretyakov. Tretyakov believed that artists should not only reflect reality but shape its economic and labor conditions. For two years, Tretyakov lived on a kolkhoz, or collective farm, in the rural northern Caucasus. Interested in forms of social reorganization, he engaged in administrative duties, edited a newspaper, and worked with farmers on inventory, literacy, and accounting. In the kolkhoz he devised an information tool: a mural newspaper that helped the community coordinate and visualize their many activities. He called this information tool an “operational factography.”

INSTAR’s Operational Factography (2022) creates the conditions for the crossover and coexistence of projects and ideas that lead to the restitution of historical memory and its dynamization in the present. Integrating art, economics, literacy, and political engagement, INSTAR’s project takes place in two locations: at documenta Halle in Kassel, and in INSTAR’s Cuban headquarters. Viewers can access an operant archive of INSTAR’s activities and aims through ten exhibitions that INSTAR is putting on every ten days. Each show displays a specific project or or practice in Cuba, aiming to give justice to artists and intellectuals censored by the Cuban government.

INSTAR’s website

 

Invited participants

Tania Bruguera
Carlos Cárdenas Cárdenas
Chris
Aminta D’Cardenas
Gretell Domenech

Solveig Front
Anaeli Ibarra
Hamlet Lavastida Lavastida
Camila Lobon
Leila Montero

Claudia Patricia Olivera
Leonardo Otaño
Ulises Padrón
Juliana Rabelo
Marta Maria Ramirez

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Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt

events

5.6.2021, 2.30 PM

lumbung calling: Independence

conversing

20.3.2022, 2.00 PM

lumbung konteks: How to organize against a single narrative

Meydan

18.6.2022, 3.00 PM

Operational Factography

conversing

19.6.2022, 5.00 PM

Activism, Censorship, and Repression: How Proyecto Inventario Keeps Score in Cuba

conversing

21.6.2022, 5.00 PM

CANCELED: Independent multimedia platform elTOQUE

conversing

22.6.2022, 5.00 PM

CANCELED: A bibliographical study on Sergei Tretiakov

conversing

23.6.2022, 5.00 PM

CANCELED: Brief history of censorship in Cuba (1959–2021)

conversing

24.6.2022, 5.00 PM

Meeting ground: The intersection of human rights and the arts

conversing

25.6.2022, 5.00 PM

CANCELED: The day after: Transitional Justice and the Arts

conversing

26.6.2022, 5.00 PM

De la teoría a la práctica (y viceversa): lecciones para las artes en contextos de justicia transicional

conversing

27.6.2022, 5.00 PM

Nuestra Semana en La Habana con los Artistas del Futuro de Cuba

conversing

28.6.2022, 3.00 PM

Casi todos conmigo

conversing

28.6.2022, 5.00 PM

27 años de Espacio Aglutinador

conversing

29.6.2022, 5.00 PM

Casi todos conmigo

conversing

30.6.2022, 5.00 PM

Nueva gráfica cubana

conversing

30.6.2022, 5.00 PM

Embassy Talk #2

conversing

1.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Cossacks in Cuba: The Soviet visual legacy in Cuban art

conversing

2.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Revolutionary or degenerate art? Cultural policies in authoritarian systems

conversing

3.7.2022, 5.00 PM

The power of the word: Citizen discursive autonomy since the 80s in Cuba

conversing

4.7.2022, 11.00 AM

Prince Claus Fund Mobile Lab

conversing

4.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Espacio Aglutinador and Independent Art in Cuba

conversing

5.7.2022, 11.00 AM

Prince Claus Fund Mobile Lab

conversing

5.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Racialization processes around the San Isidro Movement. Control strategies from art and politics

conversing

6.7.2022, 11.00 AM

Prince Claus Fund Mobile Lab

conversing

6.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Rikimbili, a provisional epilogue

conversing

7.7.2022, 11.00 AM

Prince Claus Fund Mobile Lab

conversing

7.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Revolution as self-sabotage

conversing

8.7.2022, 11.00 AM

Prince Claus Fund Mobile Lab

conversing

8.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Land without images: The absent in Cuban cinema

conversing

8.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Land without images: The absent in Cuban Cinema

conversing

9.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Independent Cuban cinema as an essay for the public square

conversing

9.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Land without images: The absent in Cuban cinema

conversing

10.7.2022, 5.00 PM

The corrosive gaze of Nicolás Guillén Landrián

conversing

11.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Cuban cinema of the ’60s: The first heretics

conversing

11.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Land without images: The absent in Cuban Cinema

conversing

12.7.2022, 11.00 AM

The Material Ghost: Espiritismo and the Hallowed Body

conversing

12.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Cuban cinema of the ‘70s and ’80s: Performance and self-representation

conversing

13.7.2022, 11.00 AM

The Material Ghost: Espiritismo and the Hallowed Body

conversing

13.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Nihilism and disentchantment: The cinema of the special period

conversing

14.7.2022, 11.00 AM

The Material Ghost: Espiritismo and the Hallowed Body

conversing

14.7.2022, 4.15 PM

Embassy Talk #3

conversing

14.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Imaginaries of the dystopian in contemporary Cuban cinema

conversing

14.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Land without images: The absent in Cuban Cinema

conversing

15.7.2022, 11.00 AM

Disappearing territories

conversing

15.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Coordinates of uprooting: The female view in the new Cuban cinema

conversing

16.7.2022, 11.00 AM

Disappearing territories

conversing

16.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Land without images: the absent in Cuban Cinema

conversing

16.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Words of the cardumen: the young sample and independent Cuban cinema

conversing

17.7.2022, 11.00 AM

Disappearing territories

conversing

17.7.2022, 3.00 PM

Latin American Feminisms

conversing

17.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Land without images: the absent in Cuban Cinema

conversing

17.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Limits and possibilities of independent Cuban cinema

conversing

18.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Inauguration of the Peña del Júcaro Martiano

conversing

19.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Autonomous publishers (I): From clandestine distribution to independent publishing

conversing

21.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Cuba in the magnifying glass: Gender journalism and clandestine tradition

conversing

22.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Presentation of No Country Magazine

conversing

23.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Financing and challenges of independent cultural magazines.

conversing

24.7.2022, 5.00 PM

New Cuban journalism

conversing

25.7.2022, 5.30 PM

Entertainment, fashion, and lifestyle in the new independent media in Cuba

conversing

26.7.2022, 5.00 PM

From personal initiative to platforms for social change

conversing

27.7.2022, 5.00 PM

ReARTiculating Cuba: From the independent project to the nation as DAO (decentralized autonomous organization)

conversing

28.7.2022, 5.00 PM

In a broken jar

conversing

29.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Civic practices in Cuba

conversing

30.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Artists under Attack

31.7.2022, 5.00 PM

Evolution of activism in Cuba

conversing

1.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Revolutions Beyond the Revolution: Political Subjectivities in 21st Century Cuba

2.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Conference on Cyberactivism

online

3.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Intellectuals and Revolution. Debates around freedom of creation in Cuba (1959-1971)

4.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Cubalex

5.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE)

6.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Connected! Independent media and cultural fields

7.8.2022, 3.00 PM

Omni opening

9.8.2022, 5.00 PM

David D’Omni in Cuban Independent Music Concert

10.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Tragic and glorious: The 1990s and the political dimension of autonomy in Cuba

11.8.2022, 5.00 PM

D/Arts – project office for diversity and urban dialogue

12.8.2022, 12.00 PM

Spaces of transformation – Workshop on diversity in art

12.8.2022, 4.00 PM

Drawer and poetry

practicing

13.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Dissident Artists in Exile

14.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Censorship in Cuba

conversing

15.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Other cards on the table. Independent practices and discursive autonomy in Cuban culture

16.8.2022, 5.00 PM

The Totalitarian Functionary of Cuban Cultural Environment

17.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Conversation about the work of Art Brut

18.8.2022, 3.00 PM

The Art of Assembly

18.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Art Brut: An evolving notion from 1945 until today

19.8.2022, 3.00 PM

A talk about an artwork

19.8.2022, 5.00 PM

La “S” Grand Atelier – Open Source Pop-Up and Belgian-style fries

20.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Is there such a thing as a “Usological Turn”?

21.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Towards an archeology of Arte Util

22.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Cuba as a lab. The new man and the Revolution

23.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Outsider Art – Art Like Any Other?

24.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Collective practices – Museum of Naive and Marginal Art, Sebia: Boundaries, intersections /traces, and landmarks

25.8.2022, 5.00 PM

Tosquelles: Curing the Institution

online

27.8.2022, 1.30 PM

Rotilla Festival: Phoenix Edition

conversing

27.8.2022, 2.00 PM

opening concerts

live playing

28.8.2022, 1.00 PM

Rave exist in Cuba

conversing

28.8.2022, 2.30 PM

Dance Floor Gentleman

screening

28.8.2022, 4.00 PM

Cuban DJs

live playing

29.8.2022, 4.00 PM

Tribute to DJ Dark, DJ Tiko, DJ Tymon & DJ Vaamas

live playing

30.8.2022, 1.00 PM

Performance, poetry, and politics – civic impossibilities

conversing

30.8.2022, 2.30 PM

Family in Motion (Work in Progress)

screening

30.8.2022, 4.00 PM

Free Hop Concert

live playing

31.8.2022, 1.00 PM

Music in Quarantine

conversing

31.8.2022, 2.30 PM

1 per year

screening

1.9.2022, 1.00 PM

CANCELLED: This is how it looks and this is how MatraKa Producciones is projected

conversing

1.9.2022, 2.30 PM

Screening: Free Air and Campaign – Let Backwardness Go By

screening

1.9.2022, 4.00 PM

Live set

live playing

2.9.2022, 2.00 PM

Comisión Depuradora, Rap Sounds with MTK

conversing

2.9.2022, 4.00 PM

Concert with guest DJ Aslı Gabuk

live playing

3.9.2022, 1.00 PM

CANCELLED: Exit Festival, an open door

conversing

3.9.2022, 2.30 PM

Neither Red nor Green: Blue

screening

3.9.2022, 4.00 PM

Cuban DJs

live playing

3.9.2022, 6.00 PM

Que volá con Rotilla

DJing

4.9.2022, 1.00 PM

A community that was born and grew without permission

conversing

4.9.2022, 3.30 PM

If God wants and the party allows it

screening

4.9.2022, 4.00 PM

Down With Everything

live playing

4.9.2022, 8.30 PM

Que volá con Rotilla

DJing

5.9.2022, 2.00 PM

Closing concert

live playing

5.9.2022, 8.30 PM

Que volá con Rotilla

DJing

8.9.2022, 11.00 AM

The dissociation of behavior

practicing

8.9.2022, 12.00 PM

Screening of plays by the company Persephone Theatre

screening

8.9.2022, 3.00 PM

Persephone Theatre’s conference: The Resistance Boat

conversing

9.9.2022, 3.00 PM

Obstacle theatre. Ontological impediment

reading

9.9.2022, 6.00 PM

The Mifflin Equation

practicing

10.9.2022, 11.00 AM

Train for what? Workshop for performers

practicing

10.9.2022, 3.00 PM

Theatricality and Performativity from/before necropolitics

conversing

10.9.2022, 6.00 PM

The Enemies of the People (Post-mortem Report)

practicing

11.9.2022, 10.00 AM

Screening of plays by the theatre’s company Kairós

screening

11.9.2022, 3.00 PM

Autonomous expanded practices

conversing

11.9.2022, 6.00 PM

The Enemies of the People (Post-mortem Report)

practicing

12.9.2022, 6.00 PM

Anthropophobia

13.9.2022, 6.00 PM

Anthropophobia

14.9.2022, 10.00 AM

Screening of Cuban theater plays

screening

14.9.2022, 3.00 PM

Marianela Boán: Contaminated Dance

conversing

14.9.2022, 6.00 PM

Vertigo

practicing

15.9.2022, 10.00 AM

Screening of Cuban theater plays

screening

15.9.2022, 6.00 PM

Vertigo

practicing

16.9.2022, 3.00 PM

Social art in New York City – a subjective report

conversing

16.9.2022, 5.00 PM

Art artivism, beyond governments

conversing

17.9.2022, 10.00 AM

Non-human agents during the war by Antiwar­coalition.art

screening

17.9.2022, 11.00 AM

How ships with plants are involved in invasions

showing and telling

17.9.2022, 12.15 PM

Landscape in anticipation of a hero

conversing

17.9.2022, 3.00 PM

Wayward Subjects: Algorithmic Solidarity

gathering

18.9.2022, 5.00 PM

The Curious Work of Art

conversing

19.9.2022, 6.00 PM

Learning and political imagination for all lives

21.9.2022, 4.00 PM

Truth and Politics. Arendt, Lies, and the Common World

conversing

22.9.2022, 5.00 PM

Antisemitism, Eichmann, Banality of Evil

conversing

23.9.2022, 10.00 AM

Disavowing chance

conversing

23.9.2022, 3.00 PM

O.L.S. presents Vernacular Modernism All Over the Deep South

23.9.2022, 5.00 PM

Hannah Arendt, Freedom, and Art

conversing

24.9.2022, 10.00 AM

Disavowing chance

conversing

24.9.2022, 3.00 PM

Avant-Garde Lawyers

listening

25.9.2022, 10.00 AM

Disavowing chance

conversing

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