Filip De Boeck
As a Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Leuven, anthropologist, writer, curator and filmmaker Filip De Boeck is actively involved in teaching, promoting, coordinating and supervising research in and on Africa. Since 1987 he has conducted extensive field research in both rural and urban communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Selected publications :
De Boeck's current theoretical interests include youth and the politics of culture, urban infrastructure, and the transformation of private and public space in the urban context in Africa. He has published extensively on these topics.
Co-authored with photographer Sammy Baloji, his most recent book is 'Suturing the City. Living Together in Congo's Urban Worlds' (London: Autograph ABP, 2016).
Other book publications include 'Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City', a joint book project with photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart (Ghent/ Tervuren: Ludion / Royal Museum of Central Africa, 2004). While the English version of the Kinshasa book was reissued in 2014 by Leuven University Press, it was also translated in French and published as 'Kinshasa. Récits de la ville invisible' (Brussels: Renaissance du Livre, 2005). For this French version De Boeck received the Henry Lavachery award from the Académie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique in 2008.
Together with Alcinda Honwana, De Boeck also edited 'Makers and Breakers. Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa' (Oxford: James Currey, 2005).
Exhibitions :
In 2004, together with architect and critic Koen Van Synghel, De Boeck curated an exhibition, 'Kinshasa: The Imaginary City' , for the ninth International Architecture Biennial in Venice. This exhibition, which was commissioned by the Flemish Architecture Institute (Vlaams Architectuur Instituut, VAI), was awarded a Golden Lion for best installation. Subsequently it travelled to Brussels (BOZAR, 2005) and Johannesburg (Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2006).
In 2008 De Boeck and Van Synghel also curated 'The World according to Bylex' for the Royal Flemish Theatre (KVS) in Brussels. This exhibition focused on the work of Congolese artist Pume Bylex and was accompanied by the publication of a book and a film, 'The World According to Bylex' (Brussels: Royal Flemish Theatre/ Africalia, 2009).
Finally, in 2016, Filip De Boeck and Congolese photographer Sammy Baloji made Urban Now. City Life in Congo, a major exhibition that went on show at the WIELS contemporary art centre in Brussels, in May 2016. It offers an exploration of different urban sites in Congo, through the media of photography and video. Focusing upon the ' 'urban now' ', a moment suspended between the broken dreams of a colonial past and the promises of neoliberal futures, this exhibition is an artistic and ethnographic investigation of what living – and living together – might mean in Congo's urban worlds.
Film :
In 2010 De Boeck released Cemetery State, a 70 minute long documentary film which examines urban youth's politics of death in a Kinshasa graveyard. A Belgian Dutch co-production, it won the Mirror Award (Spiegelprijs) in April 2010, and was screened in several national and international film festivals.
Phone: +32.16.326046
Address: Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium
Selected publications :
De Boeck's current theoretical interests include youth and the politics of culture, urban infrastructure, and the transformation of private and public space in the urban context in Africa. He has published extensively on these topics.
Co-authored with photographer Sammy Baloji, his most recent book is 'Suturing the City. Living Together in Congo's Urban Worlds' (London: Autograph ABP, 2016).
Other book publications include 'Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City', a joint book project with photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart (Ghent/ Tervuren: Ludion / Royal Museum of Central Africa, 2004). While the English version of the Kinshasa book was reissued in 2014 by Leuven University Press, it was also translated in French and published as 'Kinshasa. Récits de la ville invisible' (Brussels: Renaissance du Livre, 2005). For this French version De Boeck received the Henry Lavachery award from the Académie Royale des sciences, des lettres et des beaux-arts de Belgique in 2008.
Together with Alcinda Honwana, De Boeck also edited 'Makers and Breakers. Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa' (Oxford: James Currey, 2005).
Exhibitions :
In 2004, together with architect and critic Koen Van Synghel, De Boeck curated an exhibition, 'Kinshasa: The Imaginary City' , for the ninth International Architecture Biennial in Venice. This exhibition, which was commissioned by the Flemish Architecture Institute (Vlaams Architectuur Instituut, VAI), was awarded a Golden Lion for best installation. Subsequently it travelled to Brussels (BOZAR, 2005) and Johannesburg (Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2006).
In 2008 De Boeck and Van Synghel also curated 'The World according to Bylex' for the Royal Flemish Theatre (KVS) in Brussels. This exhibition focused on the work of Congolese artist Pume Bylex and was accompanied by the publication of a book and a film, 'The World According to Bylex' (Brussels: Royal Flemish Theatre/ Africalia, 2009).
Finally, in 2016, Filip De Boeck and Congolese photographer Sammy Baloji made Urban Now. City Life in Congo, a major exhibition that went on show at the WIELS contemporary art centre in Brussels, in May 2016. It offers an exploration of different urban sites in Congo, through the media of photography and video. Focusing upon the ' 'urban now' ', a moment suspended between the broken dreams of a colonial past and the promises of neoliberal futures, this exhibition is an artistic and ethnographic investigation of what living – and living together – might mean in Congo's urban worlds.
Film :
In 2010 De Boeck released Cemetery State, a 70 minute long documentary film which examines urban youth's politics of death in a Kinshasa graveyard. A Belgian Dutch co-production, it won the Mirror Award (Spiegelprijs) in April 2010, and was screened in several national and international film festivals.
Phone: +32.16.326046
Address: Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium
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“spectral Kinshasa.”
La toxicité sera le thème central de la septième Biennale de Lubumbashi, qui aura lieu en automne 2022. La biennale a été cofondée par l’artiste Sammy Baloji en 2008 sous le nom de « Rencontres Picha », et offre une plateforme publique dynamique aux artistes et acteur.ice.s culturel.le.s locales.x et internationales.aux (voir Mitter 2019 sur la précédente biennale). Cette année, six commissaires invité.e.s travailleront aux côtés du collectif et des Ateliers Picha (sous la direction artistique de Lucrezia Cippitelli) pour aborder la préoccupation urgente de la ‘toxicité’.
Toxicity will be the central theme of the seventh Lubumbashi Biennale, which will take place in the fall of 2022. The biennale has been co-founded by artist Sammy Baloji in 2008 under the name “Rencontres Picha”, and offers a vibrant public platform to local and international artists and cultural actors alike (see Mitter 2019 on the previous Biennale). This year, six invited curators will be working alongside the collective and the Ateliers Picha (the latter under the artistic direction of Lucrezia Cippitelli) to address ‘toxicity’ as an urgent concern
Companion to the exhibition CONGOVILLE, Middelheim Museum, May 2021 – October 2021One hundred years after the founding of the École Coloniale Supérieure in Antwerp, the adjacent Middelheim Museum invites Sandrine Colard, researcher and curator, to conceive an exhibition that probes silenced histories of colonialism in a site-specific way. For Colard, the term Congoville encompasses the tangible and intangible urban traces of the colony, not on the African continent but in 21st-century Belgium: a school building, a park, imperial myths, and citizens of African descent. In the exhibition and this adjoining publication, the concept Congoville is the starting point for 15 contemporary artists to address colonial history and ponder its aftereffects as black flâneurs walking through a postcolonial city.Due to the multitude of perspectives and voices, this book is both a catalogue and a reference work comprised of artistic and academic contributions. Together, the participating artists and invited authors unfold the blueprint of Congoville, an imaginary city that still subconsciously affects us, but also encourages us to envision a decolonial utopia.
Een eeuw na de oprichting van de École Coloniale Supérieure in Antwerpen nodigt het naburige Middelheimmuseum onderzoeker en curator Sandrine Colard uit om een tentoonstelling te creëren die sitespecifiek peilt naar de stille geschiedenissen van het kolonialisme. Congoville duidt op de zichtbare en onzichtbare stedelijke sporen van de kolonie, niet op het Afrikaanse continent, maar pal in het België van vandaag: een schoolgebouw, een park, imperialistische mythes en burgers van Afrikaanse origine. Doorheen de tentoonstelling en deze bijhorende publicatie is Congoville de context waarbinnen 15 hedendaagse kunstenaars, als zwarte flâneurs op pad in een postkoloniale stad, het koloniale verleden en de impact ervan adresseren.Door de veelheid aan perspectieven en stemmen is dit boek tegelijk een catalogus en een naslagwerk met zowel academische als artistieke bijdragen. Samen ontvouwen de betrokken kunstenaars en auteurs de blauwdruk van Congoville, een imaginaire stad die ons nog steeds onbewust in haar greep houdt, maar ons ook aanspoort om na te denken over een de-koloniaal utopia.
With contributions by/Met bijdragen van: Pieter Boons, Sandrine Colard, Filip De Boeck, Bas De Roo, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Sorana Munsya & Léonard Pongo, Herman Van Goethem, Sara Weyns, Nabilla Ait Daoud.
Participating artists / Deelnemende kunstenaars: Sammy Baloji, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Maurice Mbikayi, Jean Katambayi, KinAct Collective, Simone Leigh, Hank Willis Thomas, Zahia Rahmani, Ibrahim Mahama, Ângela Ferreira, Kapwani Kiwanga, Sven Augustijnen, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Elisabetta Benassi, Pélagie Gbaguidi
This first Q-note publication offers innovative and interrogative thinking from the artists, curators, and cultural theorists that presented their work at Hangar between 2016 and 2019. With Q-notes,we are creating a platform that brings actors in various areas such as art theory, curating, anthropology and political science together in conversation. We hope that this new series deepens critical analysis in cultural studies of artistic practices and the art world by asking questions that center the geographic, gendered, and sociopolitical stakes that trouble our current moment. This inaugural Q-note publication includes thoughts and reflections by Irit Rogoff, Grada Kilomba, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Paul Goodwin, Filip de Boeck, Sammy Baloji and Luis Camnitzer.
The chapter with Sammy Baloji and Filip De Boeck is the written summary of conversation organised by HANGAR and moderated by Ana Balona de Oliveira which took place in Lisbon, March 2018.
Part of special issue:
Mitigating boom & bust cycles: the roles of land policy and planning
Edited by Kristof Van Assche, Monica Gruezmacher, Leith Deacon
“spectral Kinshasa.”
La toxicité sera le thème central de la septième Biennale de Lubumbashi, qui aura lieu en automne 2022. La biennale a été cofondée par l’artiste Sammy Baloji en 2008 sous le nom de « Rencontres Picha », et offre une plateforme publique dynamique aux artistes et acteur.ice.s culturel.le.s locales.x et internationales.aux (voir Mitter 2019 sur la précédente biennale). Cette année, six commissaires invité.e.s travailleront aux côtés du collectif et des Ateliers Picha (sous la direction artistique de Lucrezia Cippitelli) pour aborder la préoccupation urgente de la ‘toxicité’.
Toxicity will be the central theme of the seventh Lubumbashi Biennale, which will take place in the fall of 2022. The biennale has been co-founded by artist Sammy Baloji in 2008 under the name “Rencontres Picha”, and offers a vibrant public platform to local and international artists and cultural actors alike (see Mitter 2019 on the previous Biennale). This year, six invited curators will be working alongside the collective and the Ateliers Picha (the latter under the artistic direction of Lucrezia Cippitelli) to address ‘toxicity’ as an urgent concern
Companion to the exhibition CONGOVILLE, Middelheim Museum, May 2021 – October 2021One hundred years after the founding of the École Coloniale Supérieure in Antwerp, the adjacent Middelheim Museum invites Sandrine Colard, researcher and curator, to conceive an exhibition that probes silenced histories of colonialism in a site-specific way. For Colard, the term Congoville encompasses the tangible and intangible urban traces of the colony, not on the African continent but in 21st-century Belgium: a school building, a park, imperial myths, and citizens of African descent. In the exhibition and this adjoining publication, the concept Congoville is the starting point for 15 contemporary artists to address colonial history and ponder its aftereffects as black flâneurs walking through a postcolonial city.Due to the multitude of perspectives and voices, this book is both a catalogue and a reference work comprised of artistic and academic contributions. Together, the participating artists and invited authors unfold the blueprint of Congoville, an imaginary city that still subconsciously affects us, but also encourages us to envision a decolonial utopia.
Een eeuw na de oprichting van de École Coloniale Supérieure in Antwerpen nodigt het naburige Middelheimmuseum onderzoeker en curator Sandrine Colard uit om een tentoonstelling te creëren die sitespecifiek peilt naar de stille geschiedenissen van het kolonialisme. Congoville duidt op de zichtbare en onzichtbare stedelijke sporen van de kolonie, niet op het Afrikaanse continent, maar pal in het België van vandaag: een schoolgebouw, een park, imperialistische mythes en burgers van Afrikaanse origine. Doorheen de tentoonstelling en deze bijhorende publicatie is Congoville de context waarbinnen 15 hedendaagse kunstenaars, als zwarte flâneurs op pad in een postkoloniale stad, het koloniale verleden en de impact ervan adresseren.Door de veelheid aan perspectieven en stemmen is dit boek tegelijk een catalogus en een naslagwerk met zowel academische als artistieke bijdragen. Samen ontvouwen de betrokken kunstenaars en auteurs de blauwdruk van Congoville, een imaginaire stad die ons nog steeds onbewust in haar greep houdt, maar ons ook aanspoort om na te denken over een de-koloniaal utopia.
With contributions by/Met bijdragen van: Pieter Boons, Sandrine Colard, Filip De Boeck, Bas De Roo, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Sorana Munsya & Léonard Pongo, Herman Van Goethem, Sara Weyns, Nabilla Ait Daoud.
Participating artists / Deelnemende kunstenaars: Sammy Baloji, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Maurice Mbikayi, Jean Katambayi, KinAct Collective, Simone Leigh, Hank Willis Thomas, Zahia Rahmani, Ibrahim Mahama, Ângela Ferreira, Kapwani Kiwanga, Sven Augustijnen, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Elisabetta Benassi, Pélagie Gbaguidi
This first Q-note publication offers innovative and interrogative thinking from the artists, curators, and cultural theorists that presented their work at Hangar between 2016 and 2019. With Q-notes,we are creating a platform that brings actors in various areas such as art theory, curating, anthropology and political science together in conversation. We hope that this new series deepens critical analysis in cultural studies of artistic practices and the art world by asking questions that center the geographic, gendered, and sociopolitical stakes that trouble our current moment. This inaugural Q-note publication includes thoughts and reflections by Irit Rogoff, Grada Kilomba, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Paul Goodwin, Filip de Boeck, Sammy Baloji and Luis Camnitzer.
The chapter with Sammy Baloji and Filip De Boeck is the written summary of conversation organised by HANGAR and moderated by Ana Balona de Oliveira which took place in Lisbon, March 2018.
Part of special issue:
Mitigating boom & bust cycles: the roles of land policy and planning
Edited by Kristof Van Assche, Monica Gruezmacher, Leith Deacon
The authors, anthropologist Filip De Boeck and photographer Sammy Baloji, take the reader on a tour of specific urban sites in Kinshasa and beyond. In their detailed analysis these sites emerge as suturing points in which the possibilities of collective urban action and dreams of a shared future continue to be explored.
The book offers a long essay on Bylex's artistic production."
Contents: Introduction: Children & Youth in Africa by Filip de Boeck & Alcinda Honwana I CHILDREN & YOUTH IN A GLOBAL ERA Reflections on youth, from the past to the postcolony by Jean & John Comaroff II THE PAIN OF AGENCY, THE AGENCY OF PAIN Child-soldiers as interstitial & tactical agents by Alcinda Honwana- Young women in the Liberian civil war by Mars Utas- Conceptions of pain & children’s expressions of pain in Southern Africa by Pamela Reynolds- Consciousness, affliction & alterity in urban East Africa by Brad Weiss III CHILDREN, YOUTH & MARGINALITY: IN & OUT OF PLACE The forbidden masquerades of Oku youth & women by Nicolas Argenti- Song, choirs & youth in Botswana by Deborah Durahm IV PAST THE POSTCOLONY? Youth culture & violence in Sierra Leone by Ibrahim Abdullah- Children & witchcraft in the Democratic Republic of Congo by Filip de Boeck- Youth & street culture in urban Africa: Addis Ababa, Dakar & Kinshasa by Tshikala Biaya- Afterword by Mamadou Diouf
De gesproken stad - gesprekken over Kinshasa
De gesprekken die Filip De Boeck en Koen Van Synghel met vier inwoners van Kinshasa voerden in het kader van de tentoonstelling Kinshasa, de imaginaire stad, zijn nu te boek gesteld. Het VAi won met deze tentoonstelling de gouden leeuw tijdens de architectuurbiënnale van Venetië in 2004.
In De gesproken stad, gesprekken over Kinshasa gaan de auteurs in conversatie met een aantal Kinois. Aan de hand van een viertal gesprekken wordt gereflecteerd over de specifieke aard van stedelijkheid in de context van centraal Afrika.
In deze gesprekken (met schrijver Yoka Lye Mudaba, psychiater Adelin Nsitu, mensenrechten activist en prof. literatuur Thierry Nlandu en schrijver Vincent Lombume) wordt de stad niet alleen verkend aan de hand van haar materiële verschijnen, haar falende infrastructuur, haar aarzelende technologie of de fysieke verschijningsvorm van haar crisis.
De teksten tonen de stad ook en vooral als mentale ruimte en tekenen de georgrafie van een specifiek stadsimaginaire dat vorm krijgt doorheen een veelal immateriële stadsinfrastructuur van lichamen en woorden. De stad wordt hier besproken en verbeeld in relatie tot het lichaam, seksualiteit, geld, dood en waanzin.
Naast een dvd met de vier gesprekken bestaat dit boek verder uit een inleidend essay van beide auteurs, de tekst van de vier interviews en een literaire tekst waarin de schrijver Vincent Lombume Kalimasi zijn relatie tot Kinshasa beschrijft.
In their internationally acclaimed publication Kinshasa: Tales of the Invisible City, anthropologist Filip De Boeck and photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart provide a history not only of the physical and visible urban reality that Kinshasa presents today, but also of a second, invisible city as it exists in the mind and imagination of its inhabitants. They bring to light a mirroring reality lurking underneath the surface of the visible world and explore the constant transactions that take place between these two levels in Kinshasa’s urban scape.
Based on longstanding field research, this book provides insight into local social and cultural imaginaries, and thus in the imaginative ways in which local urban subjects continue to make sense of their worlds and invent cultural strategies to cope with the breakdown of urban infrastructure.
This book was reprinted in 2014 by Leuven University Press.
The film (70', French spoken, English subtitles) follows a guided tour by ‘Docteur’, the owner and creator of a remarkable building that is situated in the municipality of Limete, Kinshasa, the capital of the Congo. Conceived and realised by the doctor without the help of any professional architects, as demonstrated by the unusual resting areas between each staircase, the construction of this as yet unfinished tower was started in 2003.
The Doctor’s guided tour through this enigmatic building offers unusual insight into the way old buildings are reimagined to fit new purposes.
In this way, producers Baloji and De Boeck do not only comment on the degradation of colonial infrastructures over time. But they also explore the ways in which the city continues to reformulate these earlier propositions. On the face of dilapidated buildings from a bygone era, citizens create new openings, possibilities and alternative utopian visions that form part of the city’s societal fabric.
See also included link to the trailer
https://www.talkingphotobooks.net/standingbykinshasa
Book review of Filip de Boeck and Sammy Baloji. Suturing the City. Living Together in Congo’s Urban Worlds. 2016. United Kingdom: Autograph. 330 pages. Color Photographs. Bibliography. Index. $42.70. Cloth. ISBN: 9781899282197.
Exhibition review of Sammy Baloji and Filip de Boeck with curator Devrim Bayar.“Urban Now: City Life in Congo.” Exhibited at Galeria Avenida da India, Lisbon, March 24 to June 17, 2018.
FILIP DE BOECK and MARIE-FRANÇOISE PLISSART, Kinshasa:
tales of the invisible city. Tervuren and Ludion: Royal Museum of
Central Africa and Vlaams Architectuureninstituut Vai (hb E50 – 90
5544 528 2). 2004, 288 pp.
SARAH NUTTALL and ACHILLE MBEMBE (eds), Johannesburg: the
elusive metropolis. Johannesburg and Durham NC: Witwatersrand
University Press and Duke University Press (pb $27.95 – 978 0 82234
262 5). 2008, 392 pp.
ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE, For the City Yet to Come: changing African
life in four cities. Durham NC: Duke University Press (pb $23.95 – 978 0
82233 445 3). 2004, 312 pp.
As elsewhere on the African continent, Congo’s cities increasingly imagine new futures for themselves. Today, these new urban dreams often only manifest themselves in the form of billboards and advertisements for the city to come, inspired by Dubai and other recent hot spots from the Global South. Ironically, the city model they propose invariably gives rise to new geographies of exclusion that often take the form of gated communities and luxury satellite towns designed for a still somewhat hypothetical local upper middle class.
In sharp contrast with these neoliberal imaginings, the current infrastructure of Congo’s cities is of a rather different kind. The built colonial legacy has largely fallen into disrepair. Its functioning is punctuated by constant breakdown, and the city is replete with disconnected fragments, reminders and echoes of a former modernity that continues to exist in a shattered form. These failing material infrastructures greatly impact upon the quality of the city’s social life, and push it to the limit of what is livable. Yet Congo’s urban residents constantly engage in inventing new social spaces to bypass or overcome breakdown, exclusion, poverty and violence. Exploring these spaces, the exhibition captures a more inhabitable and inclusive urban world, where the possibilities of collective action and dreams of a shared future continue to be explored.
Curator: Devrim Bayar
The exhibition is organized in collaboration with and will travel to Galerias Municipais/EGEAC, Lisbon, and The Power Plant, Toronto.
With the support of the Research Fund of KU Leuven.
In collaboration with Kunstenfestivaldesarts & Summer of Photography 2016.
curator Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi discuss Congolese
painter Moke’s bright depictions of Kinshasa city life. The basis of this conversation is an extraordinary gift of three paintings by Moke to MoMA from the Jean Pigozzi collection: Kinshasa at Noon (1980), Long Live Utex Africa (1989) and Mitterrand and Mobutu (1989).
Le temps n’est plus où les Africains étaient majoritairement des ruraux. De Lagos à Kinshasa, du Caire à Johannesburg, de Dakar à Nairobi, les villes africaines ne cessent de croître : elles figureront demain parmi les plus grandes métropoles du monde. Que reste-t-il alors de l’héritage colonial ? Et comment le futur s’annonce-t-il dans le vertige de la croissance et dans les improvisations d’aujourd’hui ? « La tour », symbole de la modernité, et « le trou », signe des ratés de la modernisation, disent les Kinois, habitants hier de Léopoldville et aujourd’hui de Kinshasa.
The annual lecture series is named in memory of Adriaan A. Gerbrands (1917-1997), former vice-director of the Leiden Museum of Ethnography (Volkenkunde) and Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Leiden University. Known as the founding father of the Leiden School of Visual Ethnography and the field of “ethnocommunication,” he presented his anthropological research through an innovative combination of museum exhibition, photobooks, and anthropological filmmaking. As such, the lecture series intends to promote academic and popular interest in the study of visual anthropology and material culture studies.
In his honor, each year a Gerbrands Laureate is appointed who has made seminal and lasting advances in the fields of visual representation, material culture, and museology, through both rigorous scholarly activities and active public engagement. Previous laureates included Professors Howard Morphy, Faye Ginsburg, Finbarr Barry Flood, Christopher Pinney, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Steven Feld, Tony Bennett, and Ariella Azoulay. Their work enacts ground-breaking theoretical interventions, while exploiting a range of multimodal methods and tools of expression with critical attention for practices that address the legacies of colonialism.
According to the Gerbrands jury, the collaboration between anthropologist Filip De Boeck and visual artist Sammy Baloji also exemplifies this kind of practice. Rather than selecting an individual for this honor the Gerbrands jury felt it is currently more appropriate to honor and highlight the kind of partnership that De Boeck and Baloji developed not just as a mode of shared knowledge production, but also as part of a critical decolonial practice. The jury understands this critical and creative collaboration as generative of a multi-vocal intervention that is not reductive to specifically colonial or post-colonial contexts, but makes possible other kinds of potentialities.
was recognized for its provocative and outstanding way of showing the public that the traditional strategies and typologies of architecture may not always be the best answer to the big challenges of the world. The project argues that the questions of identity, community and infrastructure are undergoing such heavy metamorphosis that new definitions and solutions are to be developed.
The exhibition was commissioned and realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community for the 9th International Architecture Biennale of Venice 2004. The Belgian pavilion received the Golden Lion for the best country’s pavilion.
Curators: Filip De Boeck and Koen Van Synghel
Commissioner: Vlaams Architectuurinstituut (VAi), Katrien Vandermarliere, director, Saskia Kloosterboer and Gert Renders, project managers
Photography: Marie-Françoise Plissart
Videos: selection of fragments of the film Un jour, l'avenir nous donnera raison de Marie-Françoise Plissart in collaboration with Filip De Boeck.
Camera: Marie-Françoise Plissart.
Producer: Michel de Wouters productions. 2002
Video interviews: Vincent Lombume Kalimasi, writer, Yoka Lye Mudaba, writer, Adelin N’Situ, psychiatrist, Thierry N’landu Mayamba, human rights activist. Interviewed by: Filip De Boeck and Koen Van Synghel, Kinshasa, 2004.
Camera and sound: Koen Van Synghel. Editing and subtitles: Jos De Gruyter and Jana Phlips. Translation: Filip De Boeck, Césarine Bolya en Greet Pernet.
Films: Karishika, Director: Producer: Christian Onu. Producer: Ifeani Ikpoenyi. Artistic director: Adim C. Williams. 1998
Evangéliste Kiziamina Kibila Jean-Oscar. ‘Si ton Dieu est mort essaie ‘le Mien’’. Congo pour Christ ‘C.P.C.’. Producer: Ministère ‘La puissance de Jésus-Christ’.
Texts: Filip De Boeck and Koen Van Synghel.
The VAi is subsidized by the Flemish Community.
Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City has been published as a sequel to the presentation of the exhibition. Writer: Filip De Boeck, Photography Marie-Françoise Plissart, Design: Dooreman
ISBN 90-5544-528-2. Publisher: Ludion www.ludion.be
While art and science are often treated as seemingly unrelated disciplines, there are clear and substantial links between the two. Art helps scientists to explain concepts, may serve as empirical evidence and can also be considered an expression of scientific knowledge. Moreover, crucial scientific breakthroughs require a great deal of creativity which can be achieved by interpreting and exploring the world around us through an artistic lens.
This panel discussion organized by the KU Leuven Urban Studies Institute (LUSI) focuses on the ways in which art and science meet within the context of urban studies, and how they impact one another when studying cities and urban development. For instance, can the use of art and film stimulate consciousness regarding the sustainability of the built environment and the urban climate? And how can artistic experiences, such as urban sensory walks, contribute to urban studies scholarship?
The discursive program “Les palabres de la Biennale” proposes meetings and exchanges around the broad issues of the 7th edition of the Biennale of Lubumbashi.
First, a thematic approach, proposed by Picha: a focus on toxicity, both in its urban dimensions and as an effect of extractivism.
"With this title composed of two concepts, that of "toxic" and that of "city" or "town," the Lubumbashi Biennial plans to reflect on the link between contemporary life in the postcolonial urban setting of Lubumbashi and more broadly in the global South, and the impact of the industrial, economic, ecological, social, and cultural processes that have historically contributed to the shape of urbanity in this part of the world and elsewhere." Filip de Boeck, Collectif PICHA
Then, an attention to the shaping of the biennial itself: the decentralized, horizontal, and collaborative curatorial design, the long-term commitments of the Picha association that initiated the Biennial, and the ongoing development of the Ateliers Picha over time.
Conceived as a series of podcasts that link multiple geographies and struggles to the realities of Lubumbashi, the discursive program bring together artists, theorists, activists and researchers who question the destruction caused by colonization and global capitalism. The discursive program also listen to the resistances and inventions of lives that are built in the debris of modernity, by artists and more broadly in society.
Podcast jingle 'Tambokenu' by artist Higelin Mutomb, voice: Gloria Mpanga.
The Discursive Program is supported by the Africa Museum (Tervuren), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and produced in collaboration with Bruxelles Appartient à Nous (BNA BBOT).