Absolut Revolution
“The Plaza de la Revolución contains multiple evocations and has been established since its early days as the center of socio-political life on the island, the eye of the hurricane.”
The Absolut Revolution series was conceived as a tribute to the revolutionary and renovating thought of José Martí; born both from our fascination with the figure of the Apostle and from the obsession that has accompanied us for years because of the image of his monument in the Plaza de la Revolución.
Absolut Revolution is an untranslatable play on words, the references to decode this phrase are various. On the one hand, the cognate character of the word “revolution” and on the other, the false cognate “absolut,” which refers to the philosophical concept of Absolute in a wink to Absolut Vodka and its relationship with the visual arts and Russia.
For us, the word “revolution” has always been associated with the idea of the materialization of utopia. There are also other relationships that can be found between “absolute” and “utopia,” hence the relationship with utopia serves as a fundamental guideline when we planned to alter the icon and transform it into Absolut Revolution. The idea of absolute as an infinite, perfect entity, which contains within itself everything that exists and creates it, is in itself a poetic notion of utopia.
All images presented as diptychs © Liudmila & Nelson. Click images to view full screen
Havana’s José Martí Civic Square was not randomly transformed into the José Martí Revolution Square; this transformation symbolically sealed the relationship of continuity between Martí’s revolutionary thoughts and the triumphant Revolution in 1959. Working with the image of the monument is not just working with the image of the Apostle but also with a symbol of the Revolution itself. The Plaza de la Revolución — tower, star, bastion, watchtower, lighthouse, hill, mill, obelisk, wall, tribune, and monument — contains multiple evocations and has been established since its early days as the center of socio-political life on the island, the eye of the hurricane.
All images presented as diptychs © Liudmila & Nelson. Click images to view full screen
This series is made up of a large number of images, videos, and installations, amongst which “Absolut Revolution - 1ro de Mayo” stands out, shown through a set of sixteen diptychs. In each one, we can see in the image on the left, moments during the demonstration in celebration of International Worker’s Day and in the image on the right, what happens in the same place a couple of hours later. Workers cleaning the Plaza, collecting, and organizing objects, flags, etc. that were left behind by the exalted crowd. Confronting these two moments, the epic that is broadcast by the media throughout the country and occupies the first page of the main newspapers, with the second that passes beyond memory, responds to the interest in covering all possible interpretations in relation to the very idea of the Revolution and the possibility of confronting both sides of the same coin, during and after.