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brouhaha in the 1970s. It was proclaimed the “city of the future.” Today, all it reveals is filthiness and abandon. Young people here have no recreational spaces; the only movie house is closed and decaying. In one of the many improvised parking garages in front of a building inherited from the socialist, European model, Fito and Mirita started to offer rap music concerts. The enthusiastic audience would jam pack it. The concerts were censored under penalty of the location’s confiscation. This amphitheater, which used to buzz with the annual Rap Festival and weekly music events during the 1990s, has now rusted due to the salt air and serves local youth and their reggaetón parties. Able to overcome institutional obstacles, Fito and Mirita managed to hold a tribute concert to “Fila” there; he was an underground musician who died young and had great creative capacity. Now they produce and edit Misceláneo, an independent journal dedicated to alternative art, and in particular, to one of Cuba’s most mistreated genres: hip-hop. Verónica Vega: How do you approach art? Mirita: Through my relationship with Fito; I was never directly a member of OMNI, so I can say that I saw art and what OMNI did through Fito. But in 2010, I participated in a workshop whose goal it was to create a project. I thought about doing a painting and poetry show, and that turned into the Casa Gaia Project, with poet Juan Carlos Flores. I started with enthusiasm: I have no training, just the street and what I’ve been able to learn along the way. Fito: My story with art is basically the same as OMNI’s, the wood carving workshops at the Alamar Casa Cultura, where we’d receive classes and sell our work at the fair. I didn’t have any training as an artist or promoter either. Vega: What did OMNI end up meaning to you both? Estudiantes sin Semilla 77