Sammy Baloji alternates excerpts from 1943 and 1957 archives—colonial propaganda produced by the National Institute for Agronomic Studies in the Belgian Congo—with images of those very same sites filmed in the 21st century. Laura Horelli films Simon Tjimbawe as he responds to questions sent by a museum in Braunschweig, where the belt of his ancestor, Chief Kahimemua—executed by the Germans in 1896—is exhibited. Broersen & Lukács reinterpret the song from Walt Disney’s 1967 film “The Jungle Book”, emblematic of Western imperialism through its distorted vision of nature and animals. In a dilapidated greenhouse, a composite of Western botanical gardens where plant and tree species from colonised countries are altered, a ghostly figure emerges in a dance recalling that of “The Jungle Book”, before vanishing and giving way to the avatars of a Dutch Afro-Surinamese music group. Victor Missud and Marina Russo Villani film the water people in Benin. Once in resistance against colonisation, they now confront the water hyacinth, which suffocates their lake as it reproduces at vertiginous speed.
