Reclaiming the Future: (In)Visible Dirt Borders in Sammy Baloji’s Mining Photomontages

Reclaiming the Future: (In)Visible Dirt Borders in Sammy Baloji’s Mining Photomontages

Author: 
Bragard, Véronique
Place: 
Oxon
Publisher: 
Taylor and Francis
Date published: 
2018
Record type: 
Journal Title: 
Social Dynamics
Source: 
Social Dynamics Vol 44 No 2 July 2018 pp 273-290
Abstract: 

This paper analyses how Baloji's photographic work Essay on Urban Planningand Mémoire/Kolwezi rely on the dialectic of visibility/invisibility of mining dirt to reveal similarities as well as discrepancies between past and present in capital and labour flows. Conflating archives of humans on display and photographs of abandoned mining sites, Baloji's figurations of mining dirt unravel how perceptions of dirt were used by the colonial system to impose geographies of exclusion that have become invisible. While they expose how postindependence Congo has failed to appropriate its resources, Baloji's images of artisanal miners working with mining dirt further epitomise how the disposable objects (often dematerialised via the web) consumed in rich nations involve the disposable lives of workers in the Congo within material dirt borders one can no longer see.

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CITATION: Bragard, Véronique. Reclaiming the Future: (In)Visible Dirt Borders in Sammy Baloji’s Mining Photomontages . Oxon : Taylor and Francis , 2018. Social Dynamics Vol 44 No 2 July 2018 pp 273-290 - Available at: https://library.au.int/reclaiming-future-invisible-dirt-borders-sammy-baloji’s-mining-photomontages