Rumba Rules, New Genealogies

Photographer and visual artist Sammy Baloji’s fascinating film essay explores the Democratic Republic of Congo’s colonial history and its ecological significance. Drawing on research from the 1930s, the film highlights the Congo Basin’s vital role in consuming carbon dioxide and shaping global environmental balance over a century.

One of the early landmarks of Belgian colonial urban architecture was the Forescom tower. Built in 1946, it was Leopoldville’s first skyscraper, and one of the first high rise buildings of Central Africa. Pointing towards the sky, it also pointed to the future. It embodied and made tangible new ideas of possible futures, and as such the tower materially translated and emblematically visualised colonialist ideologies of progress and modernity. The video The Tower: A Concrete Utopia offers a guided tour by ‘Docteur’, the owner of this remarkable tower situated in the municipality of Limete. Conceived and realized by ‘Docteur’ without the help of professional architects, the construction of this as-yet unfinished tower was started in 2003.

Tales of the Copper Cross Garden: Episode 1 documents the process by which copper is drawn into wire from glowing, semi-liquid ingots. A choral mass provides the soundtrack, while sporadic all-caps intertitles weave biographical details (Baloji grew up in the mining region of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo) with a reflection on the role of the Church in the colonial enterprise in Africa.

Sammy Baloji mixes colonial-era promotional reels about farming and mining in his native Congo with contemporary footage of similar practices.

Sammy Baloji’s video RN1 explores the Lunda border, blending Belgian archives with modern mining landscapes. Linking pre-colonial history to post-independence conflicts, it highlights oral traditions to reevaluate the present.