The allegorical re-presentation of colonial cinema in Sammy Baloji’s Pungulume (2016)

Abstract

This article analyses artist Sammy Baloji’s video installation Pungulume (2016) with a focus on its recycling of film clips extracted from an archival colonial film from 1912. Inspired by art historian Georges Didi-Huberman’s anachronic approach to art history, and through a sketch of the history and present-day social and political context in the Congolese Katanga region, this essay contends that these archival clips speak primarily about the present and contain a topical significance. As the author demonstrates, this topical significance can solely be assessed when the viewer is knowledgeable about current political and social debates taking place in the former Katanga province. Additionally, this present-day relevance of the archival film clips also exists in terms of the video installation’s reception – the archival film clips reflect dynamics occurring in the spaces in which the video installation was conceived and continues to be exhibited. Through this reading that ultimately causes the ‘re-presentation’ of the anachronic archival film clips (while acknowledging its indebtment to Congolese popular painting), the author recalls the necessity of considering the historical production context in scholarly analyses of artworks – even when artworks reuse archival documents that stem, for example, from colonial cinema.