"We are in Havana, Cuba. We have come here to do a few things, but the most important thing was for us to be able to visit this city of 2million residents in the years before the start of mass tourism. Our studio is here studying the social space of tourism and its resulting hotels, its swimming pools, its lobbies, and the entrances to these things. This city is pretty dusty, and its also quite hot out. We spend a lot of time here walking around and visiting the main hotels of Havana, and then sometimes getting asked to leave those hotels, while other times being shown some indifference to our presence. When not being shooed out, we navigated the colonial courtyards, mezzanines and rooftops of these temporary tourist homes.
Over the few days here, we have walked through the city’s historic colonial area, its modern business district from the mid 20th century, its residential suburb of Mirimar, its capital center, the Malecon, and its much much much less important but still somehow no more dusty perimeter residential parts. We saw some artists working with printmaking, got rather tired after the second day of constantly being asked if we would like to buy cigars, and mostly enjoyed the food.
We also went to visit the US Embassy but got a cold welcome and, after looking at it from outside the gates for a few minutes, left. We visited the hotel room which Hemingway kept, and the bar which invented the Daiquiri."
View Slideshow
