Havanna

Synopsis

Conceived by the artist as a social research project in a housing complex in the suburbs of Budapest. During the course of May 2006, Erhardt rented a shopfront space on the ground floor of a high-rise building and started renovating it. The resulting film documents the artist experiencing the potential of his own interventions in a sensitive social setting. By including the proposals of neighbors and passersby for intermediate use of the space, Erhardt’s film is an attempt to shed new light on a community suffering from prejudices and imposed stereotypes, while the work analyses the construction of a social reality in post-communist Hungary through the portrayal of an “Advice Seeking Office”. At the same time Havanna also addresses issues of artistic failure and success, promise and lost opportunity…