Aequare. The Future That Never Was

Aequare is a Latin verb meaning “to equate.” In this case, the term links the exploitative agricultural methods devel-oped during Belgian rule in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo and current approaches to land cultivation in that country. Intercutting film produced by a Belgian agronomic research center in Yangambi from the 1950s with his own recent footage, Sammy Baloji shows the ongoing, ruinous agricultural practices of mono-cropping and slash-and-burn farming as these practices perpetuate the Belgian model of heedless extraction. Yet through slow pacing and cutting back and forth between past and present, Baloji encourages viewers to consider other possible outcomes for a society with such fertile and productive modern histories.