Aequare: the Future that Never Was

"I'm not interested in colonialism as nostalgia, as a thing in the past, but in the continuation of that system. " Sammy Baloji, 2023

In Aequare: the Future that Never Was, Sammy Baloji transports you to the equatorial rainforest around the town of Yangambi in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film combines clips from a Belgian colonial propaganda film about a research centre in Yangambi with contemporary footage of the same location. Using the equator as a metaphor for equilibrium and equality, Baloji tells the story of a climate that has been knocked out of balance. The Congolian rainforest, the second largest in the world, plays a vital role in regulating the global climate and biodiversity. At the same time, the film shows how colonial interventions continue to wreak havoc to nature and repositories of knowledge.

In his colonial propaganda film on NILCO [the National Institute for Agronomic Study of the Belgian Congo] in Yangambi, Gerard De Boe uses "science" as a pretext to glorify acts like deforestation, monoculture, intensive exploitation and the use of toxins. The Latin aequare in the title means something like 'to make equal' or 'even out'. With this film, Baloji calls attention to the legacy of colonialism and the ecological devastation and disruption left behind in its wake.