Presente y Futuro, 2019
Featuring Yuriel Michel García Tápanes
Single channel video installation
9:44
13. Havana Biennial, Intermittent Rivers, Matanzas, April 16 – May 16. 2019
In 1970’s Cuban government built Alamar, the modernist suburb east of Havana, in an effort to develop public housing for the growing socialist state. Institute of the Material Science in Belgrade, at the time of former Yugoslavia, exported the IMS - Žeželj building method to the Cuban government, well tested in the development of the New Belgrade post WWII. Unlike the bare concrete of New Belgrade, Cuban architects introduced a hue of violet tones to the building of Alamar to break the monotony of the urban blocks. Today the pastel colors are barely visible in the city which struggles to maintain its basic infrastructure after decades of isolation. In the video work, camera follows a painter wandering in the city. Once imagined as an image of the revolution itself, today’s Alamar reveals the colors of desolation through painter’s color palette. The spirit of the revolution fades as the colors once used to celebrate it. The film relies on the archival film and audio footage collected in Belgrade Cinematheque about the economic cooperation between then former Yugoslavia and Cuba.