In Havana’s La Pera Park Art Anticipates Technology

Art celebrating wi-fi has arrived in Havana’s Park in advance of well-functioning wi-fi itself. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 28 August 2017 – The sun is rising and a teenager is unsuccessfully trying to find the presence of a wireless network. After months of waiting, the residents of La Pera Park, in Havana, are losing hope that an internet browsing point will be installed there. However, an artist got there before the Telecommunications Company of Cuba (ETECSA) and has placed a monument to the Wi-Fi on a pedestal in the park.

La Pera park is named after a peculiar shaped fruit – the pear – that is barely harvested in Cuba. Located on Almendares Street, between Bruzón and Lugareño in the Plaza of the Revolution municipality, the space is filled every day with families, with children who scurry everywhere and with internet users eager for a “dose of kilobytes.”

The plaque reads “Wi-Fi Monument.” (14ymedio)

Months ago in the Accountability Assemblies of the Popular Power – where delegates and citizens take stock of what has or has not been accomplished – it was announced that the state communications monopoly was going to set up a wi-fi zone in the park. It was all very exciting with the placement of new garbage containers, the repair of sidewalks, and the installation of lamps and benches. But no wi-fi.

In the absence of technology meeting expectations, art arrived first. The artist Yosniel Olay Mirabal, born in Havana in 1987, decided to give shape, through a sculpture, to that wireless technology that is changing the face of Cuban streets and squares.

Now, on a pedestal, the figure of a man attuned to a beam of signals challenges ETECSA to realize the dream of thousands.