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Documentary as Anti-Monument: On Spectres by Sven Augustijnen

Sven Augustijnen, Photos prises par Jacques Brassinne à Lubumbashi au Shaba (Katanga), le 16 juin 1988 (Photographs taken by Jacques Brassinne in Lubumbashi in Shaba (Katanga), on 16 June 1988), 2011, 24 colour photographs, scanned and transferred to digital format, and shown as part of the installation Spectres. Courtesy the artist and Jan Mot, Brussels

Publish date: 03 oct 2012

Written by Robrecht Vanderbeeken

This text is part of Afterall Journal Issue 31

Robrecht Vanderbeeken contextualises Sven Augustijnen’s Spectres within national debates over the death of Patrice Lumumba, showing how the film allows the guilt of its protagonists to emerge. Sven Augustijnen’s latest film Spectres (2011) sheds light on a dark chapter of Belgian history: the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the independent Republic of Congo, in 1961. The art institutions that have presented Spectres (such as WIELS in Brussels, De Appel in Amsterdam and Tate Modern in London, amongst others) have filled the important political function of publicly addressing and engendering debate on delicate topics that remain unsettled and repressed in Belgium. With Spectres, Augustijnen demonstrates that the artistic realm can act as an arena in which to deal with the ghosts of Europe’s colonial past, while at the same time confronting the spectres of documentary representation.

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