KCHO (Alexis Leiva Machado) is a contemporary Cuban artist whose work has been exhibited across the globe including in the United States (most notably in the MoMa).
In the Havana neighborhood of Playa KCHO has constructed a huge studio where he invites other Cuban artists to collaborate with him in his workshop, exhibits Cuban works in a small gallery and provides free wireless internet to the public. In a country where less than 5% of the population has access to internet this alone is an enormous attraction. Around lunch time you can easily find over thirty people in his studio, all centralized around the outdoor routers and squeezed under the shade. The space resembles a modern day watering hole as individuals are lured like flies toward a light bulb with the promise of access to the outside world.
Here, everyone is looking down at their devices. Smart phones, laptops and tablets—which are rare sights in most Cuban locales—are scattered through the crowd like unholstered pistols at an NRA event. The entire scene is both incredible and bizarre. People are packed into such close proximity while maintaining tremendous distance between one another. Chickens and their chicks run around the cemented space clucking and chirping at the absurdity of our existence. Their natural objections offset the sound of power tools and car motors that can be heard from inside the workshop. Despite the unique artwork and workspace, the reason that this studio is so strange is that this kind of an environment almost directly contrasts the rest of Cuban culture.
Cubans are often stereotyped by foreigners as social, direct, and sometimes outright aggressive. Due to widespread shortages on anything from printer paper to potatoes, it is very common (especially in Havana) to see long lines for basic goods and services. Most of the people in these lines are happy to interact. The heat is a consistent conversation starter, but so too are people’s children, recent television episodes, and logistical questions about where an individual has found a specific item. Where as it might appear rude to approach a random individual waiting in front of you at a Starbucks in Chicago, these simple interactions are common place throughout much of the Cuban island as we have experienced it.
To see groups of young people crowded together in “socially-connected” silence reminded me more of waiting for a Portland TriMet or being in line at an airport’s baggage check than being in the center of the Cuban capital. Recognizing this feeling of being removed from the island made me viscerally aware of just how much I enjoy the heavily reduced presence of cell-phones and computers in our day-to-day lives in Cuba. This will be an interesting factor to contend with back in the US. 