By Estrella Díaz
Cuban Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, presented on Monday June 18 the first Prizes of the 9th Digital Art Exhibit to Lerian Jiménez (printed work) and to Mauricio Abad (audiovisual piece). The exhibit is sponsored by the Pablo de la Torriente Brau Cultural Center since 1999 and undoubtedly has contributed to the formation of an ample sensitiveness capable of assimilating, enjoying and sharing the wealth of these new forms of art.
According to the jury’s decision —formed by Jorge Bermúdez, Enrique Álvarez, Laura Llópis, Rafael Villares and Víctor Casaus— Jimenez’s piece (Software educativo) is characterized “for its intelligent handling of the medium, formal and conceptual coherence and skilled inserting of didactics in order to make the audience aware of situations of public interest, without reducing expressive values exclusive to digital art.” Likewise the jury declares that the pieces by Abad (Carlitos y el silence, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos and Boceto de olvidos) are bearers of a great skill for constructing an existential speech about reality from the interaction among different language levels.”
Also in Printed Work, Second Prize went to Roberto Chávez for his piece Ex-clavos, Martí y yo; Third Prize was shared between Dagoberto Driggs (O nos salvamos los dos y Quijote) and Joel Langaney (Patinejo técnico), while mentions were awarded to Ernesto E. Rodríguez (Fumigación), José Antonio Bertot (El spot de Abu Ghraib), Lisandra Isabel García (Intimidades) andOmar Batista (Vacaerte).
in Audiovisual Work the jury explained that “seeing the differences appreciated among the works thay were awarded Mentions and the set of works that have deserved the First Prize, (the jury) has unanimously decided not to award second and third prizes in this edition, after ratifying the artistic and expressive quality of the afore mentioned works.” Mentions were for Reiner Dande Pérez (Juegos discretos), Harold Díaz-Guzmán (Medios), Alfredo Pérez (Identidad) andMaikel Lorenzo Pimentel (Babel).
One hundred and twenty artists competed in the category of Printed Work and thirty in the category of audiovisual art. In the jury’s opinion, one of the characteristics of this year’s Exhibit is that most of the pieces were able “to distance themselves from visual topics already considered commonplace or basically resulting from photographic language”, and that pieces have as a common denominator “the expressive searches” that gave “preference to the attaining of a novel visual based on a language more linked to the perspectives favored by digital art.”
Poet and filmmaker Víctor Casaus, director of the Pablo Center, on inaugurating the Exhibit claimed that in “these nine years artists have been constructing a cultural project that has placed digital art in the vast, loved and ample territories of Cuban culture.”
“Digital art is here to stay”, assured Casaus, and stressed that the Pablo Center has been and is the child of solidarity.
“This exhibit has been possible”, he said, “thanks to the timely support, when it was most needed, by the Ministry of Culture”. Casaus was likewise grateful for the help received in different moments from ETECSA, the Office of the City’s Historian and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), among other institutions. He also remembered and thanked the important support that the Exhibit has received for several years from the HIVOS cooperation institute (Holland).
Likewise he reminded all that the present edition will carry out a “look toward us”, because it is always useful and necessary to analyze the use given to new technologies.
The feast of digital art has begun”, he said, “a feast committed to many things —the same things that the Pablo Center is committed to—, that is, in favor of justice and freedom, and committed against the cultural models intent on globally imposing themselves to turn into a single amorphous body the wealth of our countries’ cultures. The Pablo Center is also “a place of cultural resistance against mediocrity, against poor taste, against banality, against the perversion that means to take artistic work to its most passing and less durable moment.”
The inauguration of the 9th Exhibit was the chosen moment to present the Pablo Prize –created in 1998—to Maestro Juan Blanco, a pioneer of electro-acoustic music in our country. In the words inscribed on the prize (a ceramic tile especially created by artist Alfredo Sosabravo. National Prize of Art), the prize is awarded to “the music for El mégano, an adventure of a young militancy, for treading (and teaching to tread) on the roads of new technologies of his time, for the defense of imagination and of artistic search that are indispensable for creation and for life.”
The Pablo Prize was received in Juan Blanco’s name by his son Enmanuel, who said that the award had “made him very happy” and asked him to “convey his sincere thanks”. Enmanuel said that his father also asked him “to dedicate the prize to his computer, which has accompanied him in the last years of his musical creation”. In that already ancient NEC, Enmanuel said, “he has made direct digital synthesis since the 1990s. The machine still works, and Juan Blanco wants to dedicate to his computer this important prize,” he stressed.
The 9th Digital Art Exhibit will remain open until mid July and the prizes, mentions, the jury’s selected works and samples from other participants may be seen by the public at the front and back galleries of the House of Poetry and in the Pablo Center’s Majadahonda Room, both at 63 Muralla Street, Old Havana. Likewise, the following exhibitions will be open to the public up to July 18: Shot (23 y 12 Movie Theater); winning artists of the Digital Art Exhibit of CLIC Foundation, El Salvador (ICAIC’s Cinematographic Cultural Center), where there are also secreenings of audiovisual works); anthological show of digital artists from the Digital Art Exhibits in the eastern Cuban province of Las Tunas (Martínez Villena Room, Main Square, Old Havana) and Conexión interna (Spanish-American Cultural Center, on Malecón).