Rudolf Duala Manga Bell — works on paper

These works are based on the video installation Rudolf Duala Manga Bell — a German Story

Wegweiser IV, archival pigment print, edition of 10 © Henrik Langsdorf

Good runners and swimmers

Water carries meaning on multiple levels in this story.

A homage to its cultural significance in Douala, it is also the medium that connected the German shipping merchants with their Douala counterparts, who transported their goods to the coast in their pirogues. There they were picked up by the Germans.

But water channels also one of the few accounts about Rudolf’s youth in Germany, written by a classmate: “For us boys, the new classmates [Rudolf and his companion Tube Meetom] were naturally very interesting. Everyone courted their friendship, because both were physically very agile, good runners and swimmers.”

Good runners and swimmers 20.34, diptych, archival pigment print, edition of 3 © Henrik Langsdorf

Ostensibly reaffirming the cliché of physical prowess of the Black athlete, as he and his companion were seen by their German classmates, in the film the image of the swimmer rather speaks to a steady, unwavering struggle against a greater power.

When the swimming scenes were filmed, it so happened that the cameraman’s underwater camera display failed so he could not see what he was filming. He jumped in the water with the camera on, blindly filming as he was getting his bearings. The resulting footage is literally that of a man not in control, which in essence looks like a person desperately struggling under water, and no longer in command in a medium he is used to mastering. This made it eerily fitting for a scene that marks the end of Duala Manga Bell’s protracted resistance fight. The diptychs, which have an abstract quality, show the blurring contours of the pool and bubbles under water, as seen, or not seen, by a desperate swimmer.

Rudolf Duala Manga Bell — works on paper

Deep Space collages