STATEMENT
In January 2018, the Internet penetration rate in Cuba was only 30%. At that time, the only connection alternative was through public areas with wifi access, provided by ETECSA, the island’s telecommunications monopoly.
Starting in 2014, a fiber optic cable from Venezuela connected Cuba to a global broadband architecture. In March 2015 public squares and parks throughout the country were equipped with hundreds of wifi access points. These spaces were functionalized overnight; they became gathering places for large crowds regardless of the time or day of the week, so the experience of connecting to the Internet became a collective act, without privacy. There converged the artist who had to hold a conference, the young people who uploaded their videos to YouTube and surfed their social networks, the professional who downloaded information for their work, and the families who talked through video calls with their relatives outside Cuba. The key to this access was the NAUTA cards.
For about 5 months the artist created a collection of NAUTA cards that he found in these public spaces and others that were consumed by him during his working hours in these places. These cards have different interventions, such as notes, drawings, scratches, and tears due to automated manipulation during the period of navigation. This collection is an archive that documents the physical memory of digital Internet consumption in the Cuban context in this time interval.
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