Sammy Baloji

Web presence

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/twentyninestudioproduction/

Works

Aequare: The Future That Never Was

Date
2023

Video, 21:04min

Description

Sammy Baloji’s Aequare: The Future That Never Was is set in the rainforest around Yangambi in today’s Democratic Republic of the Congo. Seamlessly alternating between past and present, the video juxtaposes excerpts from Belgian documentaries made in 1943 and 1957 with contemporary footage of the same locations. The once-modern residential buildings and laboratories now possess the eerie charm of lost places, starkly exposing the end of colonization efforts to turn Congo into an agricultural asset for Belgium. What remains is the exploitation of the land and the forest. Baloji contrasts picturesque shots of the rainforest and its idyllic soundscape with historical footage of technical equipment, standardized procedures, and the detached tone of the narrators, who praise the exploitation of the territory in a completely matter-of-fact tone as a mark of progress and a civilizing Belgian achievement.