http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/arts/design/tania-bruguera-cuba-creative-time-summit-video.html 2016-10-14 21:39:13 Artist Asks Cubans to Imagine They Are Running for President In an effort to open a political dialogue, Tania Bruguera has released a video proposing that anyone should be able to run for any job in Cuba. === MEXICO CITY — In a video released at the Creative Time Summit, a conference in Washington about art and politics, Ms. Bruguera proposed that she — and any Cuban — should be able to run for any job. In a telephone interview, she said that included that of Raúl Castro, who has said he would step down as president in 2018. “Let’s use the 2018 election to change the culture of fear,” Ms. Bruguera said in the one-and-a-half-minute video, adding, “To make a Cuba that is run by us all, not by a few.” “Today I put myself forward as a candidate for the 2018 election,” Ms. Bruguera said, talking to the camera in an unfurnished room. She exhorted, “Put yourself forward.” Her bid is largely hypothetical. Under Cuba’s single-party system, the president is elected by the National Assembly, which is made up of candidates drawn from existing provincial assemblies or nominated by members of organizations allied to the Communist Party. But in the telephone interview, Ms. Bruguera said it was time to “open a dialogue” about more representative politics. “People should be able to have this fantasy of another political system,” she said, adding that the video was “a way of creating a new political imaginary.” The video was performance, as well as a real declaration of intent, she said: “It’s artivism.” The video, Ms. Bruguera said, would be part of an interactive project in which Cubans could upload videos of themselves talking about the political platforms they would run on if they were candidates. Pushing barriers has been Ms. Bruguera’s signature. She made waves in December 2014 when she attempted to stage an During the Havana biennial in 2015, Ms. Bruguera held a live reading of Hannah Arendt’s 1951 book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” in her apartment in central Havana — a performance drowned out by the constant sound of jackhammers digging outside her window. But while she has drawn the wrath of Cuban officials, her career has Ms. Bruguera rejected suggestions by some Cuban artists and critics that her political work in Cuba was a way of furthering her career. “That’s just very cynical,” she said.