Abstract
This article analyses artist Sammy Baloji’s video installation Pungulume (2016) with a focus on its recycling of film clips extracted from an archival colonial film from 1912. Inspired by art historian Georges Didi-Huberman’s anachronic approach to art history, and through a sketch of the history and present-day social and political context in the Congolese Katanga region, this essay contends that these archival clips speak primarily about the present and contain a topical significance. As the author demonstrates, this topical significance can solely be assessed when the viewer is knowledgeable about current political and social debates taking place in the former Katanga province. Additionally, this present-day relevance of the archival film clips also exists in terms of the video installation’s reception – the archival film clips reflect dynamics occurring in the spaces in which the video installation was conceived and continues to be exhibited. Through this reading that ultimately causes the ‘re-presentation’ of the anachronic archival film clips (while acknowledging its indebtment to Congolese popular painting), the author recalls the necessity of considering the historical production context in scholarly analyses of artworks – even when artworks reuse archival documents that stem, for example, from colonial cinema.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 23-42 |
| Number of pages | 20 |
| Journal | Moving Image Review & Art Journal |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Financial support for this study was provided by a research mandate by the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek-Vlaanderen (FWO).
Funding Information:
Historian Bogumil Jewsiewicki has constantly underscored the importance of this political and social historical context in his analyses of Baloji’s artistic work: In Katanga, the effects of industrialization were not equally distributed; the benefit of mining rights and the memory of local sovereignties had remained alive […]. Those who were ‘native’ to the mining area had long been able to avoid salaried work, or ‘wage slavery’, while the railroad facilitated the recruitment of workers in neighboring Kasai. In these neighborhoods, together with the women, they would father many children; schooled by the company, they would benefit from good jobs. When independence was declared, the bana shaba, 60 percent of whom were natives of other regions, benefited from industrialization even though the mines were not located inside the territory of many of these ethnic groups. Being a descendent of a ‘copper eater’ was no longer an advantage unless the province became a state. Moise Tshombe’s brief reign lasted from 1960 to 1963 and received the financial support of the UMHK.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Intellect Ltd.
Keywords
- found footage
- colonial cinema
- Congo
- archival footage
- Sammy Baloji