Francois Knoetze

Part of a series of 4 films, Kinshasa (2018), Shenzhen (2019), New York (2019) and Dakar (2018), the project explores the relationship between digital technology, cybernetics, colonialism and the re-enchanted notion of a Non-Aligned Humanist Utopia. The four films of Core Dump are rhizomatic assemblages of found footage, performance documentation and recorded interviews that form narrative portraits of the uncertainty in the nervous system of the digital earth. The films are fragmented arrangements of images and sounds, with each chapter forming links across geographic and temporal discontinuities.

Part of a series of 4 films, Kinshasa (2018), Shenzhen (2019), New York (2019) and Dakar (2018), the project explores the relationship between digital technology, cybernetics, colonialism and the re-enchanted notion of a Non-Aligned Humanist Utopia. The four films of Core Dump are rhizomatic assemblages of found footage, performance documentation and recorded interviews that form narrative portraits of the uncertainty in the nervous system of the digital earth. The films are fragmented arrangements of images and sounds, with each chapter forming links across geographic and temporal discontinuities.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the world’s largest producer of cobalt, a rare earth mineral that is essential in the production of technologies. In this hybrid documentary, South African artists Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson, together with Congolese historian Joe-Yves Salankang Sa-Ngol, trace the trans-continental journey of this precious metal: from its violent extraction in the mines of DRC to its sale on global stock markets. The Rock Speaks weaves a complex contemplation on an urgent ecological crisis that is fuelled by obscene labour practices that our technological systems demand.