Many artists in Cuba arrive at performance art by way of pop culture styles, such as hip-hop. The most influential multidisciplinary performance troupe is OMNI Zona Franca, which came together at the community center in Alamar, a housing project east of Havana. Combining oral and written elements, as well as music and the visual arts, the group achieves creative freedom paradoxically by making use of metaphors of the revolution (see documentary Omni frente al espejo). One of the last strongholds of alternative artistic praxis in Havana, the members of this group try to infuse poetry in all of their surroundings: their stage is daily life itself. Their performance is a process borne out of their environment. Whether on the long bus ride from Havana to Alamar, or in the rundown common areas of their housing projects (see Renacer and Canales),

or in the religious procession to the town El Rincón on the day of the St. Lazarus festivities (For the Health of Poetry),

 

or in their bi-monthly Friday performances, or their yearly “Never-ending Poetry Festival,” they orchestrate poses and bring out the theatricality of daily gestures. As “Civic Ghosts,” they work with their audience/co-participants through their simulation of reality/performance and address topics silenced or underattended by official discourse that haunt present-day Cubans: the death of the guajiro (peasant), media disinformation, empty political slogans, the lack of beauty in everyday life, and the state-sanctioned limits to freedom of expression and movement.