“‘I just design with old things,’ she tells me with a shrug. But Yanet hasn’t worked on a play in years, and her job, apartment, and everything in it relies on the discretion of her customers. Attachment to the material and the beautiful is fleeting in Havana, breakable.”
Read more from Julia Cooke on “Five-cent Yanet”’s mostly-illegal vintage emporium in Cuba here.
Love his words, too, but these photos are great.
Havana Film Festival New York schedule is up. I’m excited to see Dia de las Flores, though there are a few movies absent from this list… still waiting to see Seven Days in Havana.
Pragmatic and, I hope, possible: The Nation on seven actions Obama should take on Cuba.
Carnaval is coming up… #wishiwasthere
— if Alan Gross’ story is any indication — is a pretty crap deal. See Tracey Eaton’s amazing analysis, here at Along the Malecón, of the shady dealings that he signed up for, which subsequently got him put in jail and abandoned there by the U.S. government. Here’s hoping that a second Obama term will hold only good things for U.S.-Cuban relations, and nothing like the Bush-era strategery outlined here.
I’m still undecided on the work of Tania Bruguera, but this is a very clear, straightforward assessment by her:
“Every country has certain censorship and self-censorship,” Tania says. “In capitalist places, it has to do with the economy. As an artist, if you don’t do something that is liked, the corporations won’t buy the work or the collector won’t collect it. In Cuba, it is strictly political, in the sense that there is a responsibility for the artist, who has been raised and educated for free, to not touch some subjects.”
(An old story, on the 1997 Havana Biennial, in the Brooklyn Rail)
This young piano maestro figures in the book I’m writing about youth culture in Havana. Check out one of his compositions.
Sometimes you’re just going about your day, listening to an 80s song like you do, and a Fidel Castro speech blares through the background of said 80s song. Such is the case with this 1983 Art of Noise track, which samples the comandante’s speech on imperialism plus U.S. Army announcements about the invasion of Grenada that year. It takes us back to a time when the U.S. would invade small nations in order to send messages to bigger ones — wait, hang on a sec…
Anyway, an interesting song from a great album. More info here.
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