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welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur, and this is the vast turbine hall in london's tate modern gallery. it has been home to a series of installations by some of the world's leading contemporary artists, and right now it is showing a work by my guest today, the cu ban conceptual artist, tania bruguera. her installations and performances have won her acclaim right around the world. also, they have prompted harassment, censorship and detention inside cuba. so is she an artist, activist, or maybe both at once? tania bruguera, welcome to hardtalk.

here we are in the tate modern gallery. it is stuffed full of things, of paintings, sculpture, and yet you as an artist seem much less concerned about things, much more focused on ideas. would that be fair? absolutely. i think the work i do as an artist is focused on gestures, i want to do political gestures, institutional gestures, human gestures, and i always feel that some things are invisible. and in a sense, it strikes me that the tools of your art are people, both yourself but also the viewers, the audience as well. rather than paint or material, it is people that matter. well, the material of the art is how we are together, and of course that is only made by people.

not long ago, you said that "art is an expression of myself, it is not something to be collected." some might find that a little narcissistic. well, i didn't mean it about me, i meant that art should be the place in which everybody can look at themselves, and when i say not to be collected, i mean that we have to pay attention on what is the role of art? art is not only, or should not be primarily something to invest in economically, but something to dive in emotionally, to open yourself up. and so much of what you do — and we will talk about specific pieces, installations and performances — so much of it seems to me in some ways closer to theatre than it is to any other art form. is that because, from your youth, you have been preoccupied

with performance? well, i am from the country where we have the best political performer of our recent history, which is fidel castro. do you consider him an inspiration? well, it is reference, let say. but in a way, when you talk about politics, there is a lot of theatre involved and what i am trying to do, in my eyes, is how can we break the classic theatre, where everything has been already decided, into a place where people can add something to the discourse? so let's talk specifically about this installation you have at the tate modern gallery. some of the world's leading contemporary artists get the opportunity to fill the huge turbine hall. you have done something very interesting because actually, you have not put much in it at all. when you come to the tate turbine, we get used to monumental and spectacular, because people

want to fill the space. when i entered, the first thing i saw, after i knew i was going to get the commission, is how beautiful the building is and how the building is like a street, like an outside street. and i said that, i want to intervene in the building and not the space they have been building, and how i wanted to intervene in the building was by bringing the neighbours in to decide what was missing in the institution for them, and we decided to collectively rename one of the buildings after natalie bell, who is a local hero. a community activist in this part of london. so that for me is something that happens all the time, the most important gesture, the most important work becomes invisible. and the theme that you were invited to work upon is movement and migration, and of course

you have got this extraordinary heat sensitive flooring that you have put in, and i have not seen it yet, and i have seen the floor but i have not seen what is supposed to happen, because if you get beyond the threshold of roughly 300 human bodies giving their heat to this floor... and working together. working collectively, that is the point, i guess. if that happens, there is the big reveal. i have not seen it because we have not had 300 people on it yet, but what happens? what we will see is the portrait of a young man that — who was suggested by natalie bell, when we invited her and we asked her to give us an example of somebody you worked with that represents the work you have done over 25 years.

and she said "yusef", i said "who's yusef?" she said yusef is this kid that we collected money for to get him here from syria. he arrived here homeless, without speaking much english, without connections, and michael locke got together one of the organisations, in which natalie actually was working, and after five years of working with him, of putting his life back on track, now he is studying medicine. so he is a syrian refugee who has made a successful life in the uk, in a new country? yes, and also it shows how much knowledge we can acquire in our countries, when we let immigrants be part of our world. and this ties in with other work you have done, with this immigrant movement, international, that you have worked with for a long time. you have done some extraordinary

installations, one of which here in london involved people having to take a lie detector test to enter your exhibition, and the test is based on the immigration test that people face when they come into the uk. yes. all of this seems to be a message that you are delivering about the positives of migration, but you must surely be aware that in many countries around the world, including in the uk, immigration has become the most sensitive political subject, with many people feeling that migration today threatens their identity, their culture, their economic well—being. i think there is a lack of education around migration, and a lot of politicians use the fear of the other in order to get people around their own political issues, and i also feel that everybody has a right to move in the world. really?

everybody should have the right to move around. despite the potentially negative consequences on host communities? but the thing is we need to learn how to live together with people who are different from us. you have taken it to extraordinary lengths over the years.. one of the most striking, in 2011, you chose to live in a very prominent neighbourhood in queens, new york city, alongside a group of illegal immigrants who are eking out a living in new york, and you had the same income as them, you had the same lifestyle as them and you lived, i think, for months like that. but wasn't that, ultimately, a stunt? because you could opt out of that lifestyle at any point. i am really struggling to see as an artist, what was the genuine, authentic merit of doing that? absolutely. i do understand where you are coming from, and of course privilege means being able to leave the situation at any point.

people who have no privilege, the people who can't take — leave a place when they want, they are in the hands of others. so of course, as an artist, i have the privilege to move around the world, but what i want to do with my art is for people to have empathy with others, to feel how other people feel, to understand where other people come from. do you think you persuade people, do you think you change minds with your art? that is what i would like, but i don't know. that's not for me to say. that is something i would like art to do. let's go back a bit because you own one of london's most prestigious contemporary art museums and yet in some ways, y°urjourney is quite unlikely because you were raised in the communist system in cuba, where culture was very much part of the ideological hold, it was part of the system, and you were supposed to toe the line, both artistically as well as politically. how did you become an individualist in that system? i don't think i am an individualist.

i think i am a person who has a very clear goal with the work i am doing and understand that everybody has a right to have freedom of expression. which in the system you were in, made you a rebel. yes, unfortunately in cuba, the government is more interested in power than empowering the people they should be working for. and yet i can't help but note you came from a rather privileged family. i believe your father was a diplomat, he was inside the system. yes, he believed in the revolution, and i think what i could take from him was the idea of living by your principles. i have different principles, he has his, i had mine. did that lead to a fallout with your father?

yes, it did. when you began to push the boundaries of what was acceptable? yes, it did. what did he say to you? well, it was a very intense relationship. the first time i was little, but the second time it was with my father... really, really? you mean he turned you in? yes, he turned me in. what? yes, yes. 1993, 1994. he took you to the secret police and said here she is, do what you want with her? yeah. that is extraordinary. that is what happens in a country like cuba, where everybody feels that they have to save himself, and if you go against the government, things are so dramatic that you have sometimes people turn against theirfamilies. could you forgive your father for that? it was a very tough relationship after that, it was hard for me, it was painful.

but at the end, he got in disgrace — like happens to a lot of people — he started seeing reality for what it was and not from his ivory tower, and i am happy that before he died, he said that he was proud of me and that i was right. so i think that was the time we... it is interesting because obviously over the years, you pushed the boundaries further and further. there is one series of works you have done that you have shown in cuba and overseas, in which you use different scenarios and different formats to invite people to think about censorship, about freedom of expression. one of your installations inside havana as part of the tatlin‘s whispers series, you put a microphone on the stage, you had sort of pretend security personnel on either side, and you invited cubans to take the microphone and speak their minds. and of course, the authorities closed it down.

they regarded you as a fundamental threat to the security of their system. they don't even want people imagining, they can be free. that is the problem we have in cuba, they don't want people rehearsing, feeling freedom. so what i do with my art is i take the propaganda the government has in cuba, or an institution has, and i put it to the test. when i did that project, raul castro was just coming into power, but of course he said it was really theatre, where people knew who was talking in a meeting, what they were saying, it was all a script. and i said well, if that's what you want, let's do it. and of course, what was revealed is it was a lie. but i can see for you as an artist, it was important to do this, even if it threatened your security or safety, your freedom. but by inviting other cubans to take part in this sort of performative, artistic experiment, you were putting them in danger as well. well, it is true that there

are consequences in cuba when you step in and you speak your mind. in the case of that piece and other pieces, because in 2014, i also called for people to go to the revolution square to do the same piece, but in the public square. i know, exactly. and there were 86 people in jail, including myself, but also other people, people i did not know. wasn't there an enormous feeling of guilt? it is. they are in prison because they decided to help you make your art. yeah. i think my art is a political statement and i invite people to be together and think together, how to create that political statement. yes, i feel responsible, more than anything. and it is interesting, because every time when i was in prison, in interrogation, i said you have to liberate my audience, you have to liberate the audience of the work.

i never told them those were dissidents or they were, why, because i always defended the fact that this was an art piece. why? because in cuba, otherwise i would have been a life in prison, because it's treason. i wonder, if we are being honest with each other, was that really a piece of art, or was it a piece of activism? in the end, are you more of a political activist than you are an artist? in my case, i see both as one thing. i cannot be like those people who are, let's say, artist during the day and in the weekend they go to a rally. for me...i am from the revolution, i am a daughter of the revolution, so politics is part of my everything. so i cannot separate having a stance on something that happens around me, versus expressing art or language, how that is. yeah, but you see, you've

developed this vocabulary, which is very interesting because it is sort of a unique way of looking at your creativity. you call it "artivism", you call it "socially useful art." i am wondering, where is the beauty, where is the aesthetic sense? where is the joy in your art? or maybe for you, it is not important. it is important, of course it is important. i have a sense of aesthetic, of course, in my work, but the sense of aesthetic doesn't come from looking at something, it comes from what you feel being part of something. so, when you discover, you can speak for yourself, and you discover you can be better than you think you can be, when you discover you are not afraid, that is beautiful. let me ask you about fear. because when you have been picked up, you have been arrested several times, how much fear do you feel? what happens is when you know when something is unjust, injustice is something that you feel, it is not something

mental, at least for me. it's something you feel is happening to you. when you feel that the law doesn't exist, when you understand that the law doesn't exist, when you understand how the system works, yes, you are afraid, of course, but all of this understanding, all of this feeling that it's not fair, it's notjust, is overpowering whatever fear you have. is it true that you once looked at one of your interrogators and said, "thank you, what you're doing to me make my art better?" yes, idid. and i also told them, "you don't know what you're doing," because i was a true believer in the revolution and now i have doubt. so, despite what appears, perhaps to the outside world, to be a slow change in cuba, your message seems to be quite bleak. i know that right now you and others collective of artists inside the country are extremely concerned about what is called

decree 349. absolutely. which i, correct me if i am wrong, i understand by the end of 2018, all artists in cuba, whatever their status, whatever their particular artform, are required to, in a sense, get a stamp of approval from the ministry of culture to allow them to continue to work. absolutely. not only that, if you decide not to do it, they will take away your permit as an artist, like they have done already with some as a test. meaning you can never exhibit or buy art, or sell your art or do anything related with art in the country. they will take your equipment, your instrument, your house, your cars, whatever they think is helping you to do the art, or you had used in the process of showing the art. unfortunately, i think that creates problems where there are not. meaning there will be a huge space

and a huge vacuum that can be filled with corruption. the people in cuba, the interrogators, and the minister of culture already have sentenced me as a non—artist. in cuba, once i enter the country, i am not an artist. they decide that for you. that is the problem with 349, the government decides who is and who is not an artist, what is and what is not art. when they watch an interview like this, they hear you speak so frankly about what you see as the failure of their system and the deadening effect of their system on ideas, on expression, on creativity. how do you know that when you go back home, you won't be put back in a police cell? as it is, every time i come home since 2015, every time i enter the airport i am stopped and i have to wait one, two, three hours until the secret police come and interrogate me in, when i go in and when i go out. sometimes in between as well. but it's ok, i have nothing to hide. i'm not doing anything wrong. i only want people in cuba to be

free and speak their mind. there's nothing wrong about that. you've said lots of interesting things to me about the relationship between your creative impulse and your political feelings, which are clearly very strong. you say you are a daughter of the revolution. you did one particularly interesting piece not so long ago where you announced, as a sort of artistic experiment, that you were going to run for president in cuba. no, the press loves those kind of news. what i actually said in the video was that because elections are coming and because they are completely controlled by the government, me together with a group of activists wanted to tell every cuban to propose themself as a candidate. i said if i asked you to do it, i would do it too. here. i start by proposing myself, but i never said president.

in a way, this whole interview is about is the blurred line between your activism, your art and your politics. frankly, given the sorts of people we see entering into politics today, who don't have a political career, but come into politics from outside think they can come in and think they can run a country. perhaps you can guess what person i am eating of... yes, trump. are we allowed to say names here? 0k, good. the point is, ok you are not a politician, but you have always been preoccupied with politics and activism. why couldn't you be politician in cuba ? believe me, as soon as you see somebody like trump becoming president, i think a lot people who thought they could become president thought twice. for me, it is not important to be in a position of power, or to have every light on me. for me, the important thing to me is to make sure that people, that there is an educational process with the people, where everybody starts understanding how it feels to be themself. it's very hard because in cuba, we have been 50 years,

where even the fathers, the parents, are the censors of their kids. you don't even have to go to school, even in the house they say, "don't say that, you will get in trouble, shut up." that is what i am interested in, how can we create a social project that educates people into being the best they can be? that is not what is happening in cuba now. i am still completely blown away by the story of you and your father, but it strikes me in the course of this interview, everything you describe about your experiences in cuba makes actually think that you wouldn't be the artist you are today had you not been through all the experiences you have been through in cuba. if you had been brought up with a relative freedom, say, of being a performance installation creative person in london, you probably wouldn't be the artist you are today. well, it is important not

to romanticise censorship. it is important not to idealise moments of repression when people are more creative because of it. but also, let's be clear, the world is full of problems. not only cuba has problems. the world is full of injustices and it is full of irregularities that are very unjust. so i am sure i will have done something. and in the end, just to conclude on that thought, will you always regard cuba as your home base, your creative centre, or could you end up leading cuba behind? that is a hard question, because cuba is still painfulfor me, and you cannot abandon something that is painful. yep. tania bruguera, it has been a pleasure having you on hardtalk.

thank you very much indeed. the pleasure is mine, thanks. hello there. we're going to end the week on quite a stark temperature contrast across the country. many northern areas, scotland and northern ireland, much cooler and fresher on friday, whereas further south it really will be quite warm, particularly where we see the sunshine. and the reason for it, well, we've got these weather fronts straddling central portions of the country, and by the end of the night, that cooler air will make inroads across scotland and northern ireland, whereas further south, we move into that very mild air mass. so rural temperatures starting the day off at 11—14 degrees,

whereas further north, low single figures, perhaps a touch of frost in one or two of the glens, with some mist and fog. and as we head to friday itself, that weather front barely moves. it stays static through central parts of the country, with brighter weather to the north and to the south. so we'll see outbreaks of rain throughout the day on friday throughout northern england, maybe the north midlands, into wales, scotland and northern ireland. bright, fairly breezy, but on the cool side. the south certainly will be dry, sunny and warm. the south certainly will be dry, sunny and pretty warm. could see the odd shower around, maybe, across the western side of scotland. otherwise it's going to be mostly dry here, that cloud bringing outbreaks of rain to northern parts of england, into wales and the midlands southwards. a pretty glorious afternoon, in fact, with light winds, and that sunshine is going to feel more like summer than autumn. those temperatures topping out at around 22, maybe 23 degrees in the south—east. around the mid to upper teens celsius under that cloud, and for scotland and northern

ireland, temperatures here ten to 12 degrees. so it will feel very different. now, as we head on into the start of the weekend, this weather front peps up, and in fact an area of low pressure develops. looks like it could bring quite a lot of rain to parts of england and wales, but some areas could have a washout of a day. maybe an inch or more of rain as we head into the afternoon. it becomes more confined, slowly, to the south and the east of england, whereas further north, actually a lovely start to the weekend, with lots of sunshine around, but again feeling quite cool here. but much cooler across the south and east compared to friday. now, hopefully that area of low pressure eventually moves away into the near continent. a ridge of high pressure builds in, to settle things down, but then we see another weather system pushing into the north—west corner of the country, so here it'll turn wet and windy through the day. could be a bit of a hang back of cloud across the far south—east. eventually it should clear away, and a better looking day sunday for england and wales. some good spells of sunshine. but it turns increasingly

wetter across scotland, perhaps into the far north of england later in the day, and feeling a little bit warmer across—the—board, certainly, than on saturday. i'm sharanjit leyl in singapore. the headlines: scrambling for aid after indonesia's earthquake and tsunami — our correspondent mariko 0i is with rescuers as they prepare to end their search operation. here in the city of palu electricity is back up and the economy is starting to move again. us senators have the fbi report on supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh who's been accused of sexual misconduct — key democrats say it's incomplete. we have many fears that this was a very limited process that would constrain the fbi from getting all the facts. having received a thorough briefing on the