Waiting for the Sun

2023, 5 mins

Bebson Elemba, an interfrequential being, clicks his tongue against his metal mask—a signal, a rupture in time. On the Kwenge River, a spacewalker drifts past the ruins of a former Unilever plantation, slipping between dimensions, waiting for the sun. Shadows shift, reflections distort; what once seemed certain dissolves into suspense.

The drum calls. The past lingers beneath the waves, restless. A pot is opened—who lifted the lid? The body remembers the mouth. Moving forward through this fractured world, the spacewalker searches for a new rhythm.

In this film by Eléonore Hellio, featuring Michel Ekeba, Jean Kawata, Olele Mulela Mabamba, Kapasa Muyaka Djessa, Archange Kalej, and Papa Jean K., sound and image fold into one another. The soundtrack, mixed by Hellio, carries a song with words by Bebson Elemba—also known as Bebson de la Rue—with vocals and bass likembe by Lukusa and likembe by Kabongo Tshisense, produced and mixed by Vincent Kenis.

Kongo Astronauts

― Artist

Invented in 2013 by two artists based in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kongo Astronauts traverses the vertigo of worlds; to the disturbances and syncopations of the contemporary cyborg, K.A. responds with artistic acts. A fluid collective, K.A. is built through the confrontation of experiences and through an attempt to resist the psychic ghettos that cover multiple postcolonial realities. K.A. manifests in the interzones of digital globalization, where past, future, and present collide and intersect with the politics of intimacy and the identities of urban and rural lives.

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