Just a Movement

After being expelled from France for his subversive communist activities, the Senegalese Maoist activist and artist Omar Blondin Diop (1946-73) returned to Dakar, where he joined the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa and, with his incendiary speeches against colonialism, challenged the power embodied by Léopold Sédar Senghor, president of Senegal.

In Mythologies (1957), Roland Barthes first presented his renowned critical analysis of the cover of a 1955 issue of Paris Match—the iconic image of a young African cadet saluting the French flag. What haunts this famous analysis? When Belgian artist Vincent Meesen went in search of the then-cadet for his film Vita Nova (2009), he found an old African who had forgotten almost all of the French national anthem. As Meessen’s investigation reveals, Barthes himself “forgot” to mention the history of his own family’s relation to colonialism, particularly the history of his grandfather, Captain Louis-Gustave Binger, who “gave” Côte d'Ivoire to France. The film launches a critical and moving account of the specters that haunted one of France’s most enlightened cultural critics, and have yet to be fully acknowledged today.

Ultramarine is a visual poem, narrating the 'exile blues' through spoken word performance, improvised rhythms and textile display. It is a poetic essay in repoliticising one of the most universal colours, which also has colonial references. Objects and documents are rendered in words by the Afro-American poet Kain, voiced in music improvised by drummer Lander Gyselinck and animated in images by Vincent Meessen. Ultramarine is composed like a spectrum: it unfolds and intertwines fragments of meaning.

This work explores the unknown participation of Congolese intellectuals in the Situationist International movement, especially the student M'Belolo who wrote a protest song in May 1968.