Link

BREAKING NEWS:

1. YOANI SANCHEZ’S KEYNOTE on MARCH 15 at 4PM WILL BE STREAMED LIVE Click on “Live Stream” (to the left)

2. NEW LARGER LOCATION FOR SATURDAY AFTERNOON PANELS!

TISHMAN AUDITORIUM, 66 WEST 12TH STREET.

MORE TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE ON EVENTBRITE.

Click on “Reservations” (to the left) to get a seat.

The Revolution Recodified is a three-day conference at The New School and New York University about the impact of digital technology in Cuban culture and society. For more than a decade, Cuban artists, musicians, independent journalists and librarians have teamed with computer scientists and engineers on the island and in the diaspora to foment a socially engaged and politically independent culture using digital technology. The conference will explore the ways that digital technology is transforming Cuba’s cultural and political landscape by challenging the state’s longstanding monopoly on communications media and its hegemonic control of cultural production and distribution.

PROGRAM:

FRIDAY, MARCH 15 Hemmerdinger Hall, New York University, 100 Washington Square East

4:00 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

4:30 KEYNOTE: Yoani Sanchez

8:00 VIDEO PROGRAM: DESPERTAR (2011) and OPERACION ALFA (2012)
Ricardo Figueredo Oliva /Screening at Juror Lecture Hall, Silver Center, 100 Washington Square East  

SATURDAY, MARCH 16               NOTE NEW LOCATION
The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th street.

12:00-2:00 THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA IN CUBA: ITS RELEVANCE AND IMPACT
Panelists: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Ted Henken, Ariana Hernandez-Reguant
Moderator: Coco Fusco.

3:00-5:00 CUBA IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT: SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICAL CHANGE
Panelists: John Kelly, Yoani Sanchez, Nitin Sawhney, Thomas Werner
Moderator: Sean Jacobs

7:00  THE NEW SCHOOL, 55 West 13th Street Room 531

DIRECT FROM HAVANA, CUBA: PABLO MENENDEZ AND MEZCLA NYC

SUNDAY, MARCH 17 Theresa Lang Center, Arnold Hall, 55 West 13th street, 2nd floor

12:00-2:00 THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUTONOMOUS CULTURAL AND PUBLIC SPHERES IN CUBA TODAY
Panelists: Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, Ana Dopico, Pablo Menendez, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo Moderator: Chris Stover

3:00-5:00 PLENARY SESSION WHAT’S NEXT? CUBA’S EVOLVING POLITICAL AND CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

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This event was made possible thanks to support from The New School’s Academic Events Fund, Parsons Cross School Funds, Eugene Lang College, The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, New York University’sCenter for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, NYU’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese Literature and Culture, NYU’s College of Arts and Sciences, NYU’s Department of Comparative Literature and The Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

YOANI SANCHEZ

Yoani Sánchez is a Cuban blogger who has achieved international recognition for her critical portrayal of life in Cuba under its current government. Sánchez is best known for her blog, Generación Y (Generation Y), which is translated into 17 languages, and she is also a regular contributor to The Huffington Post, El País, Foreign Policy Magazine and CNN en Español. In 2008, she received the Ortega y Gasset Prize for Journalism; she was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time Magazine; and one of the “10 Most Influential Latin American Intellectuals” by Foreign Policy Magazine. November 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama applauded her efforts to “empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology,” and she received the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University’s School of Journalism. In 2010, Sánchez was named a “World Press Freedom Hero” by the International Press Institute, and also received a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands’ Prince Claus Fund.

RICARDO FIGUEREDO OLIVA

Ricardo Figueredo Oliva graduated from the International School of Film and Television in San Antonio de los Baños. He has produced over 20 short films, as well as working as a producer for musical theater and the celebrated Danza Abierta group directed by Marielena Boan. In 2010 He founded Cooperativa Producciones, a lab for documentary production. Through that cooperative, he has directed Sexo, Historias y Cintas de Video (Sex, Stories and Videotapes), about prostitution in Cuba; Despertar (To Awaken), a polemical documentary that was censured at the 11th Festival of Young Directors in Havana in 2011, and a “mokumentary” entitled Operación Alfa (Operation Alfa, 2012).

PABLO MENENDEZ

Pablo Menendez was born in Oakland, CA, the son of blues and jazz singer Barbara Dane. Living in Cuba since 1966, he has been an indelible part of many Cuban music scenes over the past decades: Nueva Trova (including Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, with Sílvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanés, which was blacklisted by the Cuban government), Cuban jazz (including Sonido Contemporaneo, with Gonzalo Rubalcaba), the Afro-Rock group Síntesis, and many more. Pablo founded the group Mezcla in 1989, with whom he has recorded seven albums, including a critically acclaimed collaboration with renowned singer and akpwón Lazaro Rós, and toured extensively across Europe and North and South America. His musical work in Cuba has been deeply involved in efforts to bring marginalized musical genres such as Nueva Trova (which was itself a marginalized music in its origins), Cuban jazz, rock, and rap, and Afro-Cuban genres like rumba and Yoruba music into mainstream consciousness

THOMAS WERNER

Thomas Werner is an Assistant Professor at Parsons The New School for Design. His research is Russian based, focusing on the introduction of contemporary education methodologies and the development of creative cultures within the country. Over the last seven years he has spent just over one hundred days a year in Russia partnering with twenty nine cultural, educational and governmental organizations to develop a series of cross cultural and educational projects presented in twenty seven cities. Russian partners have included; The State Hermitage Museum, the National Center of Contemporary Art, Perm Regional Government, The Moscow Biennale for Young Art, National Centre of Photography for the Russian Federation, The Central State Archive of Film, Photographic and Phonographic Documents, and the United States Department of State, among others. Thomas has curated exhibitions in the United States and internationally, including four exhibitions with the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. In early 2012 he began a new collaboration with the United Nations focusing on Media and Literacy.

CHRIS STOVER

Chris Stover is an Assistant Professor at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, where he teaches Music Theory, Composition, and World Music and coordinates the Music Theory curriculum. He received his PhD in Music Theory and DMA in Trombone Performance from the University of Washington, and holds an MA in Music Theory from the Eastman School of Music. Chris has presented papers at the national conferences of the Society for Music Theory and American Musicological Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Conference, the Third International Conference on Music and Minimalism, the Congress for Research on Dance, and numerous regional conferences. His work has been been published by Cambridge Scholars Press, Latin American Music Review, and Music Theory Online, and he has forthcoming publications in Music Theory Spectrum and Theory and Performance. Chris is an editor for Analytical Approaches to World Music, and formerly served as managing editor of Perspectives of New Music. He is also a highly active performer and composer, in New York City and internationally. Information on upcoming activities, recordings, and more can be found at www.morezero.com.

ORLANDO LUIS PARDO LAZO

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo he began work as a free-lance writer, photographer and dissident blogger in 2000. In 2010, he founded the independent opinion and literary e-zine Voces, which is Cuba’s first digital magazine. The magazine is produced in PDF format and copies circulate in Cuba on CDs, flash drives, the domestic network known as the “intranet” and through photocopied paper editions. Pardo Lazo also produces the blog, Boring Home Utopics, which describes itself as “the Collective Memories from a Unique Man in the Brave New Zoociety”. He is the author of Boring Home, awarded the Czech literary award Novelas de Gaveta (“Romány ze šuplíku”, Franz Kafka prize). He currently works as a contributing columnist for Sampsonia Way magazine.

JOHN KELLY

John Kelly is the founder and lead scientist of Morningside Analytics. His research blends social network analysis, content analysis, and statistics to solve the problem of making complex online networks visible and understandable. Kelly has directed studies of numerous domestic and international social media networks. He has a Ph.D. in Communications from Columbia University, and has also studied communications at Stanford and at Oxford’s Internet Institute. He is an Affiliate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where he works with leading academics to design and implement empirical studies of the Internet’s role in politics and social action around the globe.

NITIN SAWHNEY

Nitin Sawhney, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the New School and affiliated with the MIT Center for Civic Media. His research, teaching and creative practice engages the critical role of technology, artistic interventions and DIY cultures among communities in contested spaces. Nitin previously conducted research on urban renewal through the arts in divided cities, and creative resilience through youth media and activism in Palestine. His current work includes OccupyData Hackathons to facilitate participatory data-driven activism, and developing an online platform and place-based initiative, MikroAct, to support urban tactics and civic action in neighborhoods of Moscow and NYC. Nitin is currently completing a documentary film, Flying Paper, about the participatory culture of kite making among children in Gaza, with support from National Geographic.

SEAN JACOBS

Sean Jacobs is a scholar of media and international affairs and an Assistant Professor at The New School. He was born and grew up in apartheid South Africa, where he finished college before studying for a master’s in political science at Northwestern University on a Fulbright Scholarship. Dr. Jacobs has held fellowships at Harvard University, New York University, and The New School for Social Research. He has worked as a political analyst at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa in Cape Town and as a journalist. From 2005 to 2009, he was an assistant professor of Afroamerican and African studies and communication studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Dr. Jacobs has contributed articles to The Nation (New York), The Guardian (London), Mail & Guardian (South Africa), and The National (United Arab Emirates).

ARIANA HERNANDEZ-REGUANT

Ariana Hernandez-Reguant is a cultural anthropologist and has published widely on Cuban music, media and visual arts. She runs the cultural blog EthnoCuba as well as the associated Facebook interest group. In 2004 she co-founded and co-authored the page Cuba Underground to first house the sites for Cuban-based groups like Porno Para Ricardo and the Cacharro magazine. She is currently a research associate at the University of Miami and is writing about grassroots media, migration and non-citizen forms of civic engagement in the Cuban enclave of Hialeah, FL.