Your search

Reset search
Focus
Geocultural Space

Results 2 resources

Newest firstOldest firstAuthor A-ZAuthor Z-ATitle A-ZTitle Z-A
Abstracts
  • KOCUR, Z., 2013. Art collectives, Afro-Cuban culture, and alternative cultural production, 1975-2010: the performative interventions of OMNI Zona Franca and the struggle for space in the Cuban public sphere. Online. PHD thesis. London: Middlesex University. [Accessed 4 March 2024].

    This study presents an analysis of the appropriation of public space by cultural producers in Cuba, with a focus on art collectives, in particular, OMNI Zona Franca from Alamar, east of Havana. Based on primary research conducted with the artists, cultural producers, and scholars, I discuss OMNI’s work in the context of the history and formation of a nascent movement for civil society in Cuba, locating the collective’s work within the matrix of alternative and African diasporic cultural production. The latter is framed as part of a historical continuum and in the context of the discussion of race that emerged in Cuba’s public sphere during the 1990s with a concurrent movement among black Cuban artists to address issues of race. Situating OMNI’s work in a longer history of Afro-Cuban cultural production in Cuba as well as within the history of art collectives this study demonstrates how OMNI’s participation in the public sphere relates to social practice, appropriation of space, alternativity, and the forging of a wide coalition of civil and artistic alternatives among diverse communities. I draw on discourses on the production of space, particularly those of Henri Lefebvre and Raymond Williams, and argue that the unique and specific history of Alamar provided a fertile ground for alternative culture where multiple and countercultural expressions could be incubated and take root. The struggle over public space and the attempts by artists to create an autonomous public sphere in Cuba have led to continual conflict with the state. Using Gramsci’s theorization of civil society as incorporating both the hegemonic and contestatory realms, I contend that the level of contestation in OMNI Zona Franca’s work should be seen as counter-hegemonic expression aimed at altering the status quo. Producing new social relations, the collective’s practice is offered as an example of how art and cultural production is inaugurating alternative counter-spaces in the context of a demand for a more inclusive and representative Revolutionary public sphere.

    Read document
  • KOCUR, Zoya, 2011. Evolution within the Revolution: The Afro-Cuban Cultural Movement and Cuban Art Collectives, 1975 to 2000. In: HARRIS, Jonathan (ed.), Globalization and Contemporary Art. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. p. 123–136. ISBN 978-1-4051-7950-8.

    During the twentieth century, two movements in Cuban art played a critical role in creating an expanded space for societal debate and cultural expression: the artistic avant-garde and the Afro-Cuban movement. Initially flourishing in the late 1920s and early 1930s, these collective efforts took on new forms in the changed environment after 1959. After the Revolution, conditions for cultural production changed with the official position that art should serve ideological functions, but both avant-garde and Afro-Cuban production continued, at the risk of conflict with the state. In the face of a restrictive state that sought to control such expressions, the Afro-Cuban movement and avant-garde art collectives developed along parallel, and sometimes intersecting, lines.

RIS

Recommended format for most reference management software

BibTeX

Recommended format for BibTeX-specific software

Custom feed
Last update from database: 10/28/24, 4:45 PM (UTC)