The Low Countries. Jaargang 13

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Architecture

Tales of the Invisible City

As the capital of the then Belgian Congo, Kinshasa occupies an important place in the history of Belgian architecture and urban planning. The development of the capital was an outstanding project of Belgian Modernity; but nowadays that modernist quality is only one of the many realities of Kinshasa. Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City deals with the complex reality of Kinshasa as a post-colonial Central African city.

The motivation behind the book's publication is



worth exploring. Anthropologist Filip de Boeck and photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart, together with architect/curator Koen van Synghel, put together an exhibition on this theme for the Belgian pavilion at the International Architecture Biennale in Venice (2004). Held in the beautiful surroundings of the Giardini, the Biennale sometimes resembles an interesting, but rather respectable world exhibition, where countries can display the best of their architectural ability. Contributions such as the one about Kinshasa, on the other hand, call the nationalistic understanding of architecture into question. With its examination of the unique urban nature of the modern-day Central African metropolis, it even calls into question the organisational capacity of architecture and urban planning. For those reasons the exhibition attracted a considerable amount of criticism. There was also the fact that Flanders alternates with the French-speaking Community of Belgium and only gets a chance in Venice every four years, so an important opportunity for the international promotion of Flemish architecture was lost. However, the whole controversy suddenly died down when it was announced that the Golden Lion, the first prize in the Biennale competition, had been awarded to the Belgian pavilion. A stroke of luck for the Flemish Architecture Institute, which had organised the exhibition, but on the other hand this success meant that the debate over the statements made by the exhibition was nipped in the bud.

‘It is not, or not primarily, the material infrastructure or the built form that makes the city a city,’ argues Filip de Boeck, ‘The city, in a way, exists beyond its architecture.’ According to the traditional western philosophy of town planning, it is possible to use physical additions to the environment, such as buildings or public infrastructure, not only to give shape to a city, but also to determine its identity. In large Central African cities like Kinshasa, however, that no longer holds true. In order to describe the real identity of Kinshasa, De Boeck begins with three mirrors that reflect the city. First there's the mirror of the colonial origins. Whilst colonisation has been over and done with since 1960, the foundation and development of the modern Kinshasa naturally still has an impact on urban life. The integration of this inheritance is a laborious process, as can be seen from the new names that are given to the city, the streets and the neighbourhoods with each new regime. A second mirror is that of the village, the hinterland, the bush. Kinshasa defines itself on the basis of contrast with the village, which is depicted as primitive. However, the urban identity of Kinshasa is in fact continually infiltrated

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by the traditions, the customs and the heritage of village life. Gangs of youths mark out their territory in the streets in the same way as the hunter does in the bush. The diaspora of Kinois throughout Western Europe and the United States forms the third mirror. Myths about the lively lifestyle in the Brussels area of Matonge, where Congolese immigrants have concentrated, were cultivated for a long time, but are increasingly being dispelled. The diaspora has turned out to be not some heavenly existence, but a tough and difficult one.

Kinshasa is ‘a city in which the spoken form regularly seems to dominate the built form’. In the city there is a constant and ubiquitous flow of rumours, accusations, fabrications and stories that hold the town spellbound. If we really want to understand the urban nature of Kinshasa, this invisible city is at least as important as the tangible city of built architecture, says De Boeck, restating his basic assumption. For example, there's the dramatic phenomenon of the occult stories about bewitched children. A link may perhaps be demonstrated between the increase in accusations of witchcraft in the Congo over the past decade and the rising numbers of street children in Kinshasa. Children who are seen as bewitched are usually turned out of the house and end up on the streets. The occult stories claim that the bewitched children - sometimes scarcely four years old - lead a second life. At night they're supposed to have a secret, hedonistic existence in which cannibalism, flying, and adult romantic relationships are the rule. Death, sickness or other misfortunes in the immediate surroundings of the families of these children are associated with them and for that reason they're turned out or given refuge in churches. De Boeck has brought together actual stories and testimonies that are extremely moving. The understated portrait photography of Marie-Françoise Plissart makes the effect all the stronger. The phenomenon of the bewitched children dominates the whole book not only on an emotional level, but also in terms of content. This phenomenon corresponds to De Boeck's assertion that different realities co-exist in Kinshasa and reflect each other. The first world of the children during the daytime and the second world at night represent such a pair. They seem to correspond to the contrast between the physical reality and the imaginary dream, between the visible and the invisible. But, argues De Boeck, this duality in the Central African urbanism of Kinshasa demonstrates something else at work, something much more interesting. The mechanism that unites these simultaneous, different worlds, but also distinguishes between them, is changing. If the invisible world of the ‘bewitched children’ stories has such effects on the visible world of family structure, of life on the streets and of the church communities, then the two worlds have become drastically entangled. ‘Today, the two sides of the mirror have not only become entangled, but they have radically collapsed into each other. It is at this very point that the mirror has lost its power of reflection’.

Kristiaan Borret

Translated by Laura Watkinson

Filip de Boeck & Marie-Françoise Plissart, Kinshasa. Tales of the Invisible City. Ghent: Ludion, 2004. 285 pp. isbn 90-5544-528-2. (www.ludion.be)