Mining for the Truth

Dat het AfricaMuseum gesponsord wordt door Umicore, staat echte dekolonisering in de weg, stellen studenten verbonden aan de Radical Presence Studio van Laura Nsengiyumva aan het Gentse KASK & Conservatorium. De wortels van Umicore liggen immers in de mijnbouw in Congo, en het bedrijf controleerde tientallen jaren een groot deel van de Congolese grondstoffenwinning. Met de performance Mining for the Truth brengen de studenten die geschiedenis aan de oppervlakte.

At the Radical Presence Studio of Laura Nsengiyumva at KASK & Conservatorium School of Arts, Ghent, students are invited to collectively create performative responses to urgent topics in the public debate.

In January 2025, author and cultural worker Nadia Nsayi published a powerful column denouncing her employer, the AfricaMuseum, for weak leadership and a lack of inclusion, exposing the institution’s failed decolonization efforts. In response to this manifesto, students began investigating the museum’s relationship with the mining sector – both past and present. Their research spotlighted the museum’s current sponsorship by Umicore, formerly Union Minière du Haut-Katanga, which they identified as a major obstacle to true decolonization.

Mining for the Truth was performed on a sunny day in April, in front of unsuspecting visitors. The students chose to stage the action unannounced, at the margins of the museum, conscious of the institution’s ability to co-opt critical voices without granting them structural power. To avoid confrontation, they appeared in a festive manner, though their choreography blended joyful dance with gestures evoking hard physical labor. Armed with cardboard pickaxes, the students symbolically mined germanium ore – in reality, delicate origami forms crafted from aluminum foil. As they handed them to passersby, they sang their ‘mining song’, a catchy medley based on popular tunes. Inside each origami, visitors could unfold fragments of truth – the lyrics of the song printed within.

Mining for the Truth is an invitation to question official narratives and to bring hidden stories to light. It is an act of resistance towards institutional inertia.

TO THE TUNE OF ‘ONE MORE TIME’
– DAFT PUNK, 2000

Umicore

Umicore
Your hands are covered in
Blood, sweat and tears
From the miners

Umicore
Wat zijn uw handen vuil
Bloed, zweet, tranen
Uit de mijnen

Umicore
Tes mains sont couvertes de
Sang, transpi, larmes
Des mineurs

Do you know who’s mining for you?
Savez-vous qui mine pour vous?
Weet je wie er mijnt voor jou?

TO THE TUNE OF ‘MONEY, MONEY, MONEY’
– ABBA, 1976

Money, money, money
It’s so funny
In a rich man’s world
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world
Germaaaanium
All the things I can do
With my mines and with my money
It’s a rich man’s world
It’s a rich man’s world

A mine like that is hard to find but I can’t get it off my mind
Ain’t it sad?
And if it happens to be free I take it all I take for me
That’s too bad
I am Umicore, I’m in Congo,
I sell it cheap in the Euro
And win a fortune with the mine
My life will always be just fine

This article was published in the context of Come Together, a project funded by the European Union.