Havana... the death body of Paradise

Architectural Association exhibition. 'In the Kingdom of Heaven there is no grandeur to be won, inasmuch as there all is an established hierarchy, the unknown is revealed, existence is infinite, there is no possibility of sacrifice, all is rest and joy. For this reason, bowed down by suffering and duties, beautiful in the midst of his misery, capable of loving in the face of afflictions and trials, man finds his greatness, his fullest measure, only in the Kingdom of this World.' Alejo Carpentier Havana … The Dead Body of Paradise shows some glimpses of research work carried out by students of Inter 8 on the unit trip to Havana in January. Revolution, declamatory art and propaganda, biological exuberance, rur-urbanity, flesh bursting and decay, collective recycling, dialogue and confrontation, archaic machines, low commerce and traditional labour all configure the cosmography of a city where imagination seems to be overwhelmed by the boldness of its material reality. Contrary to the myth of being the capital of rumba, tobacco and rum, Havana responds with a heavy physical presence, hardened by a vertical sun which exposes the ruin of its urban fabric. The pearl of the Antilles, the city of infinite wealth in the colonial world, is now a rotting paradise that reeks of sweat and debris, made of human physical contact, material recycling and constant wheeling and dealing. Fifty years of economic embargo have faded any heroism into an agonic expression of survival on the outskirts of the hegemony of global modernisation. However, even as peripheral, Havana seduces by demonstrating its otherness within the global condition. It traps its visitors in an intense tapestry of smell and touch that allows a different vantage point from which to redefine our idea of material expression – from a detached external object to an internalised and shared biological process within the city. By chance or by fate, the decay of the city portrays the kind of ‘real-marvellous’ condition defined by the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier. Yet this should not be seen as the sublimated reality romanticised by magical realisms, but the condition by which the biological processes of decay, dejection and contamination subsume the collective imagination into the experience of everyday life, and the construction/destruction of the city. AA Inter Unit 8 Merve Anil Uliana Apatina Gary Dupont Max Hacke Karl Karam Yong Taek Kwon Stavros Papavassiliou Liza Rudyk Maud Sanciaume Kayvan Sarvi Amir Atta Yousefi Olivia Wright Tutors: Nuria Alvarez Lombardero Francisco Gonzalez de Canales http://havanadeathbody.blogspot.com/