Creative Time is staging a performance of Tania Bruguera’s Tatlin’s Whisper #6 in Times Square on Monday, April 13 from 12:00–2:00 p.m. (see How Tania Bruguera’s Whisper Became the Performance Heard Round the World).
The performance is a public act of solidarity with Bruguera and other artists around the world currently facing violence and criminal charges for exercising their freedom of expression. In a Facebook event to publicize the happening, organizers declare: “As citizens of the world with a shared humanity, we urge the government of Cuba to drop all charges against Tania Bruguera, Angel Santiesteban, and Danilo Maldonado “El Sexto,” who are either imprisoned or facing imprisonment for doing what every person of the planet should be able to do: expressing themselves.”
The performance requires a microphone and a soapbox, and invites participants to take the podium for one minute of censorship-free speech. It was first staged by Bruguera at the 10th Havana Biennial in 2009, and was revisited five years later at the Guggenheim in New York (see Why Is the Havana Biennial Afraid of Tania Bruguera and Is She the Cuban Ai Wei Wei?).
On December 30, 2014, two weeks after President Obama announced that the U.S. would normalize relations with Cuba, Bruguera attempted to enact the performance in Havana’s Revolution Square. She was arrested that day, and is currently detained in Cuba after having her passport confiscated by government officials while they decide whether or not to charge her for public disorder and resisting arrest and have reportedly waged a secret media campaign against her (see Tania Bruguera’s Arrest Slows the US–Cuba Thaw, Cuban Government Brands Tania Bruguera a Criminal, Tania Bruguera Has to Stay in Cuba for Another 60 Days).
Tatlin’s Whisper was recently enacted at the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, where the artist was granted the Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize in 2010 (see Tania Bruguera Performance Enacted at Neuberger Museum of Art). The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles will also hold a restaging of the performance on April 13 from 12:30–2:00 p.m.
The Creative Time event is open to the public, and the organization encourages participants to document the performance on social media using the hashtags #YoTambienExijo and #FreeTaniaBruguera.
#YoTambienExijo: A Restaging of Tatlin’s Whisper #6 will take place in Times Square on April 13, 2015. 12:00–2:00 p.m.