A well-known poem by the Cuban writer Virgilio Pinera, entitled La Isla en Peso, begins with the apocalyptic statement: "the accursed condition of being surrounded by water" Those bom on an island might be in a better position to understand the fact that when living on an island, the territory´s natural boundary, the sea, exercises a direct influence on the points of reference, the values and naturally on patterns of social and cultural behavior.

The considerations of the philosophers of ancient Greece about matter and being were largely colored by reflections on spatial experience. Naturally, it would be nonsensical ro ascribe this obsession solely to inhabitants of islands. In fact, philosophy has never abandoned the interpretation oí a conception of space based on ontological presuppositions. "Insularity" extends beyond the purely geographical Concepts derived from geometry, physics and mathematics are combined in eve/y reflection on the ontological aspect of space with anthropological, sociological. psychological, perceptual, physiological or metaphysical ideas. Identity alwsfi implies different standpoints, like a crystal with many facets.

One must bear in mind, however, that for someone surrounded by water the horizon is a far-off line that is always bound up with riddles and enticements. The inhabitant of sn island will always be plagued with the question of a "Beyond," by that untamable curiosity aimed at a destination whose limits are thrown back over and over again by the surging, rhythmic coming and going of this gigantic liquid mass that separates him or her from the continents! body - uterus, mainland, for whom the weightless islands perhaps are something like a cutting of the umbilical cord and flight. Water h a barrier; but it is also paradoxically a kind of umbilical cord, a driving force for an squally oedipal longing "The key to the Gulf!" - Cuba is termed so -a reptile that invades America, a phallic piece of earth that lies exactly in the hollow of the tides of the Caribbean, which embrace and caress it with the tenderness of a mother or the lustful thighs of a woman. The island has difficulty breathing in the gasps of high and low tide, entirely transformed into a vibrating, salacious glans that contracts into its changing form or expands like a living animal that, breathing deeply in and out, rears up in the sea with wild movements of its tail. Perhaps its riders are unable to measure with certainty the constantly changing size of this young, unruly animal that creeps through the sea; Piñera would say, "My country, so young, does not let itself be defined!"

This island existence has not been without political consequences for the Cuban people. One could claim with good reason that in this sense, "being Cuban" has influenced our actions and behavior, the way in which we are seen or, far more, identified by others and by ourselves. And politics, like the sea, tend to dissolve and mix up everything into a formless mass of standpoints.

Like an endless story, the Cuban world reveals itself as being ever richer and more remarkable, its cultural significance within the Caribbean island world is no secret and not to be denied. Cuba sets standards, and it has won the interest of an increasingly large and diverse public. This well-earned national prestige has overcome out narrow, liquid boundaries, and thanks to the efforts of museum directors, gallery owners, curators and art magazines, Cuban art has succeeded in gaining the interest of an international public in many areas.

A long concrete strip that holds back the waves demarcates the outer edge of our cities. On the one hand the city awakens loudly in its buildings, colorful, jumbled end crowded together; the noisy motors of ancient North-American cars that nourish the tourists´ fantasies are off-set by infectious, melodic sounds or by the regular, serene rhythm of swinging hips, like the waves when they snatch awsy a piece of land from the island. And, on the other hand, there is the sea and its infinity questioned over and over again by countless lovers visiting the Malecon. Everything depends on one´s standpoint (whereby one´s view and the sea incessantly challenge limits and boundaries and subvert definitions with confusion). One often hears on the Malecon in Havana that the North lies beyond the sea. And at the end of the 19th century Jose Marti called it "the North, stormy and wild...." Hidden behind the serene authority of the sea or in the maelstrom waters of violent hurricanes something "stormy and wild" occupies the fantasy of many who, for economic or political reasons, decide to embark on the adventure of crossing "the big pond" on un-sea-worthy boats One might say that this very sea, which observes the lovers visiting the Malecon "in search of the lost kiss," is not only a thermometer of politics and economics, but also a tragic necropolis for so many balseros (Term for those Cubans who flee over the sea from Castro´s regime in un-seaworthy boats), or an indulgent judge who rules on the fate of the shipwrecked.

Nonetheless, politics and the market contaminate everything; even the assessment of art is not spared this It is perhaps for this reason that when developments in the island´s art scene are discussed that one speaks of "Cuban art," and not merely about "art"; one need only look at any artist´s career to notice how often, besides group exhibitions abroad, titles such as New Art in Cuba or Contemporary Cuban Art, and other terms following a similar pattern appear. The phenomenon Cuba has influenced the development of a greater portion of the art that has been produced on the island in past years. And, what is most important, it has legitimized it and at the same time condemned it to make use of its insularity as its trump card. "New" is equated with "critical," and "Cuban" with "authentic."

Finally, the ups and downs of the political tides have held up a mirror - with all of its reversed images - to the "Key to the Gulf": Miami - Little Havana - ironically tied to that other Havana (that gave birth to it from the island) through the tarnished prism of a glance at the horizon: from here, from there, out of desire, yearning or distrust Or perhaps it is just a matter of the confrontation between two standpoints that collide before the backdrop of that horizon that they share, in order to head for their mirror image again later, like the

breaking of the waves. The unshakeable sea both connects and separates them ¦ this accursed condition.

The work Trampoline - Salto al lleno by Rene Francisco reproduced four diving boards with water piping on the roof of the subway entrance in front of the Music Theater, pointed towards the surrounding space of the street Each diving board has a ladder that leads to this urban space, here understood as a "river," or as a "swimming pool." One immediately thinks of transportation and communication veins that are equally represented through the images of rivers or streets throughout the world. At the same time, however, an image of repression opposed to this aspect of connectedness arises, since rivers and brooks that once flowed freely have mostly been and are buried or redirected under the earth in favor of an urbanization and economization of space. The space of the street, the most apparent symbol of "the city," is above all interpreted as a pool in Rene Francisco´s work - a pool in which one can iet oneself be borne up, let oneself drift or sink. "I have presented the diving boards in the context of their relationship to the urban masses and the laws of the market (labor market, free economy, etc.). The city presents many aspects that suggest a pool. When I construct the diving boards of my Swimming Pool in the middle of the street, I can imagine the crowds of people who pass by under them like a great stream that can take me up like historical water that flows through the city, in which I would have liked to immerse myself, sometimes. Maybe it will allow them, absorbed like the liquid that flows from these thoughts, to become rebels in their dreams for a few minutes during the day, as absent-minded and fantastic as I am; and then they will land deep down below, like the water." The following lines reveal the central role that water plays in the culture, the way of life and thinking of Cuba´s people: "If I take a bath in them, down there: When I get up in the morning, I drink a glass of water and take a bath. When I drink a glass of water, I check whether the water has been boiled or not. When I take a bath, I sniff cautiously to lind out whether the water-jet smells good or bad. When I do these things, I like tc imagine which of these chains of thought have a connection to what might take place in my work during the rest of the day, and enjoying ´an endless meditation,´ i content myself with the fact that the water continues to flow like a tributary river that branches out in my body and connects me to the rest of the world; as if the words in my memory flowed out with my sweat, over the foam and then out into the world." (Rene Francisco)

Rene Francisco directs our gaze at social phenomena through the association of "city" with "pool," while Lazaro Saavedra´s "Water" represents a completely different frame of reference: "I come from a context that made me develop very contradictory views about water, water reveals itself to me in its double nature of doing both good and evil. Although it was the source of land-based life many years ago, it has also become a graveyard for the people of my country. My island is punished by tropical storms that rival the biblical deluge; my island is just as endangered as Atlantis was. On my island we live surrounded by water, and yet it is one of the things we lack the most. If water has been a means of communication for many cultures it has become a means of isolation on my island." ´Lazaro Saavedra)

Fountains/Bodies by Lazaro Saavedra takes up the ambivalence that water holds for the individual according to context and circumstances. This photographic work in several parts sets its sights directly on Duchamp´s Ready-made Fountain (Fontaine) and its strategy of contextual displacement by dealing playfully with our expectations; with what one supposes one will find in a particular place and what one actually sees and experiences. "The human body as a fountain and the fountain as a human body, the interconnecting bridge is the liquid or the fluids. The first impression one gets when one looks at the photo in the toilet is that it represents a fragment of the human body, or a fluid that emanates from the human body (this feeling becomes more emphatic through the photo and due to the context in which it is exhibited), but when one observes it carefully one can realize that there is a fountain and then the viewer can mentally substitute the body or the human fluid by a fountain. The liquid is the union or the bridge, both are addressed, the clean, pure liquid proceeding from the fountain or the liquid full of wastes and toxins coming from the human body." (Lazaro Saavedra) The video Fluids, in the Schauburg (Cinema) in Gelsenkirchen-Buer, is based on this truly subversive aspect of transformation that is both permanent and beginning anew again and again - expressed through the technique of a cartoon film: ´lust like water, the verbal and mental fluids of human beings contain the dual and contradictory nature of communication and non-communication, danger and safety, Animations constructed only with lines. Like water, a line is both one of the simplest and most complex elements at the same time. Controlling a line to communicate ideas is no less a challenge than controlling the flow of water." (Lazaro Saavedra).