Module 3: Know Your Enemy: Long- term Strategies for Resistance

Shaped by personal experiences of censorship and abuse of power in Cuba, Tania Bruguera uses art to initiate social and political change. As an artist, activist and Senior Lecturer of Media and Performance at Harvard University, Bruguera is an international advocate for free speech. Her work regularly explores themes of totalitarianism, immigration, and human rights and her decades-long fight against censorship informs her perspective of the current political moment in the US.

In a powerful and provocative conversation, Tania challenged our assumptions about resistance, offering bold perspectives shaped by real-world experience and outlining how activism ought to be proactive, not reactive. She posed the following to our cohort:

• What if protest isn’t enough?

• How do you fight a system without playing by its rules?

• Can what you desire be used against you?

• What happens when you live as if your rights already exist?

• How do we work collectively?

Art, Tania suggests, isn’t just expression—it’s disruption. It creates space where the unimaginable becomes possible.

She left our cohort with a powerful challenge, to make “art for the not-yet” -her concept of using art to preempt authoritarian reaction and shape future possibilities.