Statue of Loss

Which memories remain today, 100 years after the end of World War One, of the Congolese soliders who fought and died in Africa and Europe? Faustin Linyekula follows their traces in Statue of Loss, concerned with a man who attempted to erect a monument in their honour. Different documents gave a history, a face and ultimately a name to the Congolese soldiers who went to war for Belgium – a country that had enslaved them. Yet Paul Panda Farnana, himself a veteran and founder of the Congolese Union (Union Congolaise), wanted more than that. On the 23^rd of October,1923, the president of the Congolese Volunteers complied with his enquiry, allowing for the building of a memorial. But Paul Panda Farnanda died under mysterious circumstances seven years later, still before he could have realised his project. Dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula asks, in this solo, how we might remember the Congolese soldiers who died for Belgium in World War One, differently, other than with the phantom of a monument that was never raised – a rock, a memorial of loss, a mere rumour?

Faustin Linyekula lives and works in Kisangani, in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Together with Opiyo Okach, he founded the Gàara Company, Kenia’s first contemporary dance group, in Nairobi in 1997. In 2001, and back in the Congo, he created a space for dance and visual theatre in Kinshasa, offering training programs as well as support for research and productions, in the form of the Studios Kabako. He deals with the effects of decades-long wars, terror, fear and the economic collapse of himself, his family and friends. Faustin Linyekula regularly teaches in Africa, Europe, and the United States.

Duration: 40 min. / in English and French