i’m briefly back in wellington, touching base with my community here and planning to type up a pile of notes from the my years of cyberformance experiments to take back to brisbane and wrangle into a coherent thesis. but before that happens, i have a side-trip to cuba and the “magdalena sin fronteras” women’s theatre festival. the festival is part of the magdalena project so it will be an opportunity to reconnect with many colleagues as well as meet new ones and discover the richness of cuba’s alternative theatre scene. i’ve never been to cuba before and my knowledge of the country is not great (yet); i’m romantically attracted to the music, architecture, fine cigars and beautiful old cars, & i’ve seen the doco “how cuba survived peak oil” (also referred to in richard heinberg’s recent lecture ‘What will we eat when the oil runs out?’). i am curious to find out how things are in cuba now in terms of the organic community gardens that the movie documents. i’m told there is a lot of poverty; and unless i bring one with me, there’s no chance of a data projector to play with. so it looks like i’ll be packing one, along with my flexible mirror – and hoping not to get grilled on the way thru LA! i’m going to be hanging out with theatre artists in santa clara, but i’m also interested in finding out about any digital arts activity in cuba. so far my googling has found the visual arts focused mainstream digital arts scene and the annual international digital art exhibition in havana, but where’s the underbelly? the hacktivists and the open sourcerers and the grrls? i’ll keep looking …