HOPSCOTCH (THE CENTRE OF THE SUN’S RADIANCE)

 

Hopscotch (The Centre of the Sun’s Radiance) takes listeners on a journey across two continents- Africa and Europe-  to explore the ways in which histories of labour tied to the train’s development are embedded in the landscape. Through field recordings, oral histories and radio broadcasts, captured near the Shinkolobwe uranium mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a former UMHK-owned uranium refinery in Olen, Belgium, the project examines how the (colonial) past continues in the present, albeit under different guises.  Borrowing the title of Julio Cortázar’s eponymous novel, Hopscotch shifts between chapters whose beginnings and ends are never the same, disrupting the notion of linear time that structures both historical and train-based narratives.


‘… We are going to make of the Congo the center of the sun’s radiance for all of Africa. We are going to keep watch over the lands of our country so that they truly profit her children.’

-   Patrice Lubumba, Independence Speech of the Democratic Republic of Congo, 30 June 1960

5.1 sound installation / 2.5 hours looped

Production: 2021