Painters skin

“Vertical City” is part of a multi-channel video installation in which the utopian architectural vision of Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez (1948–2015) meets with Henrik Langsdorf’s visual reflections on urbanism in present-day Kinshasa in the form of animation and collage. 

In this two-minute animated loop some of Kingelez’ buildings are woven into a proliferation of plant-like shapes that, instead of buds and blossoms, bear morsels of existing Kinshasa architecture and play off the notion that dwellings are like living organisms and units are cells, as envisioned by the metabolist architecture movement in Japan in the 1950s and 60s.

In the resulting thicket Langsdorf pays tribute to the denizens of Kinshasa, who pulse through the ever-congested arteries of this city in overcrowded yellow cabs and taxi buses. 

Vertical City

baud

spheric intersections

It was said that the day after Rudolf Duala Manga Bell, a Cameroonian king who was executed by the German colonial government in 1914 for his resistance against German plans to establish an apartheid regime in his hometown Douala, another 200 people where hanged. This piece pays tribute to these people, whose names and life stories are not known, other than offering resistance to the brutal German colonial regime in Cameroon. Music by Julián de la Chica.

Two hundred dead

This is part of a series which is based on “Deutschsein” (being German) — a scene from my video installation “Rudolf Duala Manga Bell - a German Story” which deals with questions of cultural and national identity in Germany in the context of its colonial history and how it relates to anti-Black racism today. Here, the idea is expanded to not only create a space of fluidity between notions of race, but also age and gender.

fluid identity

This video confronts the brightly colored architectural utopia envisioned by Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez with the grim realities of present-day Congo by imagining his buildings after decades of aging and decay, placing them in the context of the daily struggle of life within the urban sprawl of Kinshasa.

Ville Fantôme/Kinshasa La Belle

"Rudolf Duala Manga Bell – a German story" is a video installation about a Cameroonian King who used peaceful protests and rule of law to fight the brutal German colonial regime. To quash his resistance against their apartheid plans for his hometown Douala, the German Empire used a pretext to put him on trial for high treason without due process and executed him in 1914.

Rudolf Duala Manga Bell – a German Story

Part of a series in which there are several focal points: intersecting lines build nest-like structures, but the centers have been cut out of those nests, creating a sense of loss and renewed focus on what is not there anymore: what is missing stands out the most, it creates black holes.

The flow of energy that the dashed-line loops unwittingly create, which becomes more visible in the less populated areas, is interrupted where lines have been cut, yet one has the sense it is merely an interruption and that, unlike in an interrupted electric circuit, energy continues to flow.

loss and continuity

"lit mullein" is a photo with vector interventions: a fairly plain, insignificant ‘dead space’ with some power cables on a gray floor receives a new life by shapes that seemingly ooze out of the cables, or mimic them, as well as other shapes that turn this jumble into a playful semi-abstract spatial experience. 

  

lit mullein

red thicket

Abstract composition with collage, pigment on canvas

brown composition with plastic bag

This work confronts the brightly colored architectural utopia envisioned by Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez with the grim realities of present-day Congo by imagining his buildings after decades of aging and decay, placing them in the context of the daily struggle of life within the urban sprawl of Kinshasa.

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henrik simonsen

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