Copper Means Trouble: Two Films on the Copper Mining Industry in Katanga, DRC

This article seeks to explore the origins of copper through a reflection on the landscape of Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo,in Sammy Baloji’s Pungulume (2016) and Bodil Furu’s Mangeurs de Cuivre (2016). Informed by the definition of landscape as a set of forms that is generated through a process while embodying history, and the concept of ‘slow violence’, that is delayed and invisible and thus a challenge to be visualised, the authors analyse the historical and social meanings of the depicted landscapes. The authors argue that the pieces demonstrate the landscape unfolding its troublesome past and present that stands at the cradle of a complex network in which copper is alive, eliciting in the viewer reflection and the imagination of a possible future.