ReVeLeVeR is a revisitation of the Kongo Astronauts’ series Lusanga “ex: Leverville” (2015), located at the site of the Unilever palm oil plantation in modern-day Lusanga. After King Leopold’s overthrow, in 1911, the Belgian government partnered with Lever Brothers (later Unilver) for the extraction of the palm oil needed to make Sunlight soap and other products. Lever Brothers’ headquarters and main manufacturing plants were located in a model city called Port Sunlight, near Liverpool. In an attempt at enlightened, progressive capitalism, Port Sunlight’s workers had neat rows of suburban houses, schools, and health care, structured leisure activities, and internal rules to promote an ideal society built on middle-class values. The challenge to transport this model to the Congo and there to gain access to unlimited supplies of palm oil led to the establishment of the town Leverville, at the confluence of the Kwenge and Kwilu Rivers.
“ReVeLeVeR” is a palindrome combining la “rêve” (the dream) and “Lever,” and recalls historical violence and extractivism, which includes the exploitation of natural resources—minerals such coltan and cobalt used in electrical components that adorn the Spacewalker suits featured in these performative images—as well as the problematics of colonial plantations and forced labor. Le reve (ReVe) is the “dream” that Lever Brothers (now Unilever) implanted in the minds of Congolese in order to exploit them. As Éléonore Hellio of Kongo Astronauts states, “The issue of extractivism is at the heart of our concerns; extractivism operates as much on humans as it does on nature.” From 50 billion euros-worth of raw material extracted from Congo, the Congolese people receive in return 50 million tons of waste electronic equipment. Ironically, over the years, Unilever has been an arts benefactor but embedded in this “philanthropy” is its fraught history of industrial and colonial systemic violence.
The artists were inspired by Malcolm Ferdinand’s Decolonial Ecology: Thinking from the Caribbean World, which outlines a “decolonial ecology” that views “protecting the environment together with the political struggles against (post)colonial domination, structural racism, and misogynistic practices.”Kongo Astronauts has been engaging with the descendants of Unilever plantation workers during the past ten years, sharing ideas around the past to project an Afrofuturist vision for Congo. Some members of the Congolese Plantation Art League have featured in Congo Astronaut’s art films and in this photographic series.