Net, Module, Chance

Abstract

Contemporary Cuban art often highlights the widespread practice of repair. Fixing broken appliances and subdividing houses via DIY construction are frequent real-life responses to economic and social precarity. At the same time, these creative practices constitute political and ethical forms of engagement with crises, inequality, and an uneven access to modernity. I discuss specific objects and practices as a way to explore what repair says about Cuba today, as well as to reflect on how Cuban repair art contributes to a more general understanding of what it means to live in a world at risk.

Keywords:

• Art of repair
• arts of contingency
• el paquete semanal
• moral luck
• Reynier Leyva Novo “Un día feliz”
• Ernesto Oroza

Notes

1 Cuba has two currencies, CUC (pesos convertibles) and CUP (pesos cubanos). 1 CUC is equivalent to US$1 or 25 CUP.

2 Johan Galtung’s phrase “structural violence” refers to persistent economic and social violence that influences human beings “so that their actual somatic and mental realizations are below their potential realizations” (1969, 168).

3 For a broader view on the regime’s continued back-and-forth on the issue of internet access and freedom of expression, see “¿Un 349 para la internet en Cuba?” (2019), Semple and Berkeley Cohen (2019), Jiménez Enoa (2020).

4 I disagree with Mattern’s contention that el paquete circulates offline to avoid censorship. Rather, I believe it supports it, as I will explain below.

5 For more on the relationship between reggaetón and el paquete, see Poole (2017).

6 Electronic communication with Stephanie Noach on 2/19/19, and face-to-face meeting with Beatriz Gago in Havana on 4/17/19. See also Noach (2019).

7 Personal conversation.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin, Madison: [grant number Senior Fellowship].