The Last of the Lucky / You Can’t Always Get What You Want (2014–16)
In spring 2014, Källström-Fäldt travelled from the US to Cuba in the spirit of visiting the country before it would change. They feared the analogue camera film they brought had been damaged by the airport security X-rays, so they went searching for new film. In the streets of Havana, they accidentally ran into one of Fidel Castro’s former private photographers. He took them to a camera shop where, despite the general lack of photographic equipment in the city, there were three rolls of film bearing the inscription “Lucky”. The salesman handed over the rolls and said: “These are the last rolls of Cuba.”
The second part of the project presents screenshots from Twitter amassed by Johannes Wahlström, as well as information about a USAID programme from the 1990s intent on creating a “Cuban Spring”. The project begins with the announcement of a free Rolling Stones concert in Cuba in March 2016 – interpreted as a symbol of change in the Americas – and is framed by efforts to incorporate Cuba into US capitalism. One such endeavour was creating a social media platform called Zun Zuneo which enabled Cubans to demand change on a grassroots level. But radical change was happening in the US instead, with the project also tracking the race for presidential power via Twitter through the accounts of Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Donald J. Trump.
Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt and Johannes Wahlström, 2014–16
Book made together with 1:2:3 (Axel von Friesen and Petter Törnqvist), B-B-B-Books, 2017