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In the pamphlet “King Leopold’s Soliloquy”, Mark Twain assumes the persona of King Leopold II
bemoaning the arrival of the camera, the “incorruptible kodak”, the only witness he “couldn’t bribe”. To the
King’s horror, this new technology was able to bear witness to the atrocities he was committing in Congo, exposing the lies that he’d been able to maintain via the press. To deal with the shocking images of the violent management of Congo Free State, the teams working for van Eetvelde and Leopold II installed one of the first large-scale propaganda operations in the history of tyrannies. Photography became a
veritable weapon against the Congo Reform Association. A secret service was set up to censor photographers who denounced crimes, torture or rape perpetrated by Belgians in Congo,
and to bribe others to produce “good photographs”.
Hôtel van Eetvelde, with its lavish interiors full of imported materials and references to Congo is an excellent example of the link between colonialism and Art Nouveau. This site, where Edmond van Eetvelde, the ‘minister of Congo’, orchestrated plans and lobbied for the colonization and administration of the Congo Free State, serves as a loaded backdrop.
Inspired by Twain and departing from Art Nouveau’s entanglement with colonialism for this in-situ installation, Max Pinckers & Victoria Gonzalez-Figueras made photographs with a Kodak Brownie camera from the early 1900s, not of colonial atrocities in Congo but of locations in the city of Brussels that served as places of power during Leopold II’s ruling of Congo Free State, which facilitated the development of Art Nouveau in Belgium.
SOLILOQUY IN EDMOND’S OFFICE
Here, photography is not approached as a weapon of imperialism, but as a mechanism for revealing the foundations of colonial exploitation embedded in our immediate surroundings, reminding us of the work that still needs to be done to confront our colonial past.
This narration is an excerpt of Mark Twain’s King Leopold’s Soliloquy that is digitally played back and re-recorded in Edmond van Eetvelde’s office. Each iteration incorporates the distinctive acoustics of the room. Mirroring the canonical sound art piece I Am Sitting In A Room (1969) by Alvin Lucier, the space gradually shapes the sound of the voice, distorting the original text, rendering it unintelligible and reshaping the characteristics of the soliloquy. Ultimately, the room’s acoustics take over the narrator’s speech, reflecting the specific sonic qualities of the office, located on the second floor of the building.