Gideon Appah and Nelson Makengo

What inspired you to develop this particular work?

My encounter with Paris, “Ville lumière”! Returning from Paris in 2016, on the plane, after my first time in Europe, I was struck by night over Africa and particularly over Congo, where I live. Even when you fly over Kinshasa, an overcrowded metropolis, you are in a darkness that creates a unique atmosphere. From this aerial view, the absence of luminous areas is unsettling, both exciting and disturbing. 

In Europe, where I had spent two months, I had been in touch with the Nuit debout movement, a spontaneous protest that emerged in Paris in the spring of 2016. For the first time, I discovered a space where the voice of the voiceless was free, opening up a fascinating dialogue on political, social, and economic issues. 

I had attended the assemblies and the political reflections that animate French youth, and I was overwhelmed with questions about my way of life in Kinshasa and the deprivations that millions of Kinshasa’s inhabitants face daily, like electricity. Once in Kinshasa, the more I tried to think about it, the more I felt caught up in the contradictions inherent to life due to years of colonization, the plundering of resources, and the state's abandonment. It was a shock for me, and it changed my perception of things, especially having access to the light as a basis for personal and collective development.

Is this ritual cinema/video art?

When I started working with contemporary art spaces, I asked myself that question about art installations and film. An exhibition is a decomposition of a scenario where the viewer participates in the experience, recreating themselves to reassemble the ends to make history. Seeing an exhibition as such has given me freedom in how to think about a film, which becomes a malleable object depending on where it is presented. The important thing for me is to go through experiences that question us, disturb us, shake us up, and make us explore plural universes.