Film installation
16mm transferred to 2K video, 4:3, color, sound
17′, loop
English, Dutch spoken
2019
A film poem filmed at Antwerp Zoo echoes diasporic voices of displacement. On being a foreigner. On dehumanization and language.
On being a foreigner. On dehumanization, which always begins with language.
UBUNDU is a film poem by Jelena Jureša, inspired by the writings of W. G. Sebald and his observations on the ‘ugliness of Belgium’—a phrase referring to a collective amnesia and the widespread complicity of Belgians in the exploitation of Congolese wealth.
Filmed at the Antwerp Zoo, UBUNDU centers on the okapi, an animal first exhibited there in 1919. The portrayal of this creature—which can only breed in captivity outside the Democratic Republic of Congo—is interwoven with a voice-over that enacts, shouts, and sings the wounds of displacement and non-belonging.
In his most notable novels, Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, Sebald navigates landscapes marked by radicalized violence, drawing a line between the Holocaust and colonialism. Antwerp Zoo and the European railway system hold particular significance in his work: the expansion of the railways facilitated capitalist growth and transnational transport, becoming a symbol of modernity, while also enabling mass deportations and genocide.
Due to her intent to include Sebald’s phrase ‘the ugliness of Belgium’ in the film, Jureša was denied official permission to film the okapi at the Antwerp Zoo.
