The exhibition 'Avenue Patrice Lumumba' is accompanied by a series of events under the title Thinking Architecture, including lectures by critic Kobena Mercer (UK) and filmmaker Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda (DRC) as well as a series of screenings examining the legacy of Lumumba.

Friday 18 September 2009

18:30 Raoul Peck, 'Lumumba: Death of a Prophet' (film, 69 min, 1992)
This film offers a unique opportunity to reconsider the life and legacy of one of the legendary figures of modern African history. Patrice Lumumba is remembered less for his lasting achievements than as an enduring symbol of the struggle for self-determination. If 'Lumumba: Death of a Prophet' is a film about remembering, it is even more a film about forgetting. It is not so much a conventional biography as a study of how Lumumba’s legacy has been manipulated by politicians, the media and time itself.

20:00 Lecture by Kobena Mercer, 'The Future in Ruins: Reflections on African Modernity'
In what sense does architecture act as the skeleton for a society’s vision of the future? Thinking through aspects of the postcolonial predicament, as inscribed in photography and film, in light of Walter Benjamin’s concept of the ‘ruin,’ this talk explores changing notions of modernity in the African context.

Kobena Mercer is a writer and critic living in London. He is the editor of 'Pop Art and Vernacular Cultures', 'Cosmopolitan Modernisms', and 'Discrepant Abstraction', author of 'Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies', and an inaugural recipient of the Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing, presented by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. In presence of Guy Tillim.

This program is curated by Annett Busch and is supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago, and deBuren.

Language English