Cut-outs of pictures drawn from comic books, movie posters, advertisements and 19th century missionary accounts flash across the screen, rendered in 3D. Moving back and forth between image and text, My African Mind interrogates the violence of the colonial gaze and its present – day avatars. Even as we fly through filmic landscapes of dramatically shifting foregrounds and backgrounds, the images grip us firmly. They insist that we face head – on the (not so) past horrors of one continent’s encounter with the other and the scars this has left on the face of the present.

In the town of Lubumbashi, in the Katanga province of eastern Congo, stand the ruins of what was once a thriving copper mining industrial site. Against this backdrop, Sammy Baloji’s haunting images – part documentary, part dreamscape – meet the sinuous choreography of dancer Faustin Linyekula and a soundtrack of successive leaders (Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kasa-Vubu, Mobutu Sese Seko and Laurent‐Désiré Kabila) promising political and economic renewal. Masterfully woven together, these elements tell a history of colonial violence, followed by postcolonial hope and its gradual demise.

Black and white media images flash across the screen at break-neck speed to a hypnotic soundtrack. The urban narrative that results is slick, modernist, and flawless. It demands our submission. It is at once seductive and, in its ability to captivate, slightly alarming. With its hammering pace and seamless composition, there is no place for intervention or insertion of alternative pictures. To elbow our way into the storyline would entail a brawl.

In 1935, the Italian army stole a historical monument from the city of Axum: a 24-meter high granite obelisk dating from the 4th Century AD. In 1947, as part of a peace treaty, the Italian government agreed to return the obelisk. For decades, it reneged on its promise. Only in 2005, and after countless delays, was the monument returned. Theo Eshetu’s experimental documentary recounts this repatriation.

Itchy City is a poem by Johannesburg-based author and spoken word artist Kgafela oa Magogodi. It is part of a larger project, titled I Mike What I like: a play adapted for the screen by Magogodi and filmmaker Jyoti Mistry. The film melds sequences from a live performance of the poem with filmed and painted images of Johannesburg, resulting in a powerful commentary on the complexities and the absurdities of everyday life in South Africa’s economic capital.

As a person of two cultures, the artist is in a continual dialogue between here and there, past and present, tradition and modernity. The artist’s effort to construct a narrative is left ambiguous, so that the line between what is real and what is imagined, what is sensical and nonsensical becomes faint. By refusing a concrete representation, Ezra Wube has found the freedom to make art that is consistent with the flux of his life.

Two dancers move from the heights of Table Mountain, overlooking Cape Town, to the bowels of the city: a car park and then the aisles of a supermarket lit a ghastly white. They are accompanied by a bird of prey and stalked by the ghostly presence of a mystic gorilla. Following in their wake, we question what the human race and the late capitalist system to which it is enthralled, have done to the cities they call home.

Welcome to Kempinski. The inhabitants of this mystical/ mythical place – is it a city, a country, a planet? – are preparing to fire rockets into outer space. They will also be deploying satellites and visiting distant galaxies. So they explain to the camera, mostly by night, to the sound of buzzing electrical cables overhead. Filmed in the historic city of Mopti in Mali, this “documentary” about movement across space and time is unscripted. A single rule sustains and threads it together throughout: interviewees imagine the future and, in the act of speaking, bring it into the present.

Izrezki iz stripov, filmskih plakatov, oglasov in misijonarskih dnevnikov iz 19. stoletja se prepletajo v tri dimenzije. S premikanjem med slikami in besedili video raziskuje nasilje kolonialnega pogleda in njegovih sodobnih avatarjev. Tudi ko letimo skozi filmske pokrajine z dramatičnimi premiki v perspektivi, nas imajo slike trdno v oblasti. Vztrajajo, da se iz oči v oči soočimo z ne tako davno preteklo grozo srečanja ene celine z drugo in z brazgotinami, ki jih je to srečanje pustilo na obrazu sedanjosti.

V mestu Lubumbashi, v provinci Katanga v vzhodnem Kongu, stojijo ruševine nekoč cvetočega industrijskega območja rudnika bakra. Na tem ozadju se tesnobne, delno dokumentarne, delno sanjske podobe Sammyja Balojija srečajo z valovito koreografijo plesalca Faustina Linyekulaja in zvočnimi posnetki političnih voditeljev, kot so Patrice Lumumba in Joseph Kasa-Vubu, Mobutu Sese Seko in Laurent-Désiré Kabila, ki obljubljajo politično in gospodarsko prenovo. Ti mojstrsko stkani elementi pripovedujejo zgodovino kolonialnega nasilja, ki mu sledita postkolonialno upanje in njegov postopen zaton.

Ob podlagi hipnotične glasbe črno-bele medijske podobe utripajo na zaslonu z vratolomno hitrostjo. Nastajajoča urbana pripoved je gladka, modernistična in brezhibna. Zahteva našo predanost. Je hkrati zapeljiva in v svoji sposobnosti, da nas očara, nekoliko zaskrbljujoča. V nabijaškem ritmu in brezšivni kompoziciji ni prostora za intervencije ali alternativne podobe. Če bi hoteli vsiliti svojo pot v zgodbo, bi zanetili prepir.

Leta 1935 je italijanska vojska mestu Axum ukradla zgodovinski spomenik, 24 metrov visok granitni obelisk iz 4. stoletja našega štetja. Leta 1947 je italijanska vlada v okviru mirovnega sporazuma sprejela zavezo, da obelisk vrne, a svoje obljube desetletja ni izpolnila. Spomenik je bil po brezštevilnih zamudah vrnjen šele leta 2005. Video predstavi zgodbo o tej repatriaciji.

Pesem Hrepeneče mesto je napisal ustvarjalec in umetnik govorjene besede iz Johannesburga, Kgafela oa Magogodi, in je del širšega projekta z naslovom Povem, kar mi je všeč (I Mike What I like), gledališke igre, ki sta jo za ekran prilagodila Magogodi in režiser Jyoti Mistry. Film spaja sekvence iz živega recitala pesmi s filmskimi in slikarskimi podobami Johannesburga. Rezultat je močan komentar kompleksnosti in absurdnosti vsakdanjega življenja v gospodarski prestolnici Južne Afrike.

Umetnik je, kot oseba dveh kultur, v nenehnem dialogu med tukaj in tam, med preteklostjo in prihodnostjo, med tradicijo in sodobnostjo. Umetnikovo prizadevanje, da zgradi pripoved, je ostalo nejasno. Zato je meja, ki ločuje resničnost od domišljije in smisel od nesmisla, šibka. Z zavrnitvijo konkretne reprezentacije je našel svobodo, da ustvarja umetnost v skladu s tokom svojega življenja.

Dva plesalca se z višin gore Table Mountain, ki se vzpenja nad Cape Townom, spustita v drobovje mesta – najprej na parkirišče, nato v nakupovalno središče, osvetljeno z mrtvaško belo svetlobo. Spremlja ju ptica roparica, zasleduje pa duh mistične gorile. Ko ju spremljamo pri njunem bedenju ob mrliču, se sprašujemo, kaj je človeška rasa, zasužnjena v kapitalističnem sistemu, naredila z mesti, ki jim pravi dom.

Dobrodošli v Kempinski. Prebivalci tega mističnega/mitskega prostora – je to mesto, država ali planet? – se pripravljajo na izstrelitev rakete v vesolje. Razvijali bodo tudi satelite in obiskali oddaljene galaksije. Tako predvsem ponoči, ob zvokih brenčanja električnih kablov nad glavo, razlagajo pred kamero. Film je bil posnet v zgodovinskem mestu Mopti v Maliju. »Dokumentarec« o gibanju po prostoru in času nima scenarija. Povezuje ga eno samo pravilo: intervjuvanci si zamišljajo prihodnost in jo udejanjajo skozi akt govora.