Bili Bidjocka, Jengu Project

All springs run to the river

Bili Bidjocka has been hunting springs all over the city of Douala, wherever water springs and life spreads around it; he creates an itinerary that illustrates the continuous movement and connections that are normally invisible, beneath our steps; he explores a new interface that may enable us to become aware of and take part in the inner life of the city.

Bili Bidjocka is an artist from Cameroon who started and directed the Matrix Art Project Center of Bruxelles and who lives in Paris; his work has been exhibited in many personal and collective exhibitions among which “Africa Remix” as well as the Biennials of Venice, Dakar, Havana, Taipei.

Doual’art has commissioned the work produced by Bili Bidjocka on the theme of water, the heart and center of the reflection of the second edition of SUD – Urban Salon of Douala dedicated to public art which takes place in Cameroon from December 4th to December 11th, 2010.

For doual’art and for SUD Bili Bidjocka has produced a map exhibited on a large wall inside the Art Centre and a series of 180 flags placed both on the only bridge that crosses the river Wouri and near the springs identified during the preliminary research.

The map is a simple portrait of the city seen from above; a drawing on the wall with lines that follow the boundaries of the city. Light blue strings of thread lead the water towards the river and recreate the hair of Jengu. Jengu is the title of the work (Bili Bidjocka & Yves Makongo, Jengu Project Work in Progress: Do It Yourself, SUD 2010); Jengu is also the spirit of the river Wouri, a creature who, in popular tales, will appear either as a siren (like the famous Mami Wata who is part of the tradition of many African countries along the coast of the ocean) or as a small creature with fin instead of hands and feet. If the portrait of Jengu may change in each tale, the common element is represented by its long hair that seduces and captures human beings. This very hair, created with threads of water leading to the river, is the principal element of Bili Bijocka’s map. Douala seen from above through the eye of the artist, is a new portrait of Jengu, an imaginary portrait like all portraits of Jengu’s, an imaginary map like all maps on which symbols, which most viewers can interpret, evoke places.
The map, though, is no common representation of Douala: few of its over 4 million people use maps to surf through the city, few are familiar with air views or the symbols of geography maps.

That is why Bili Bidjocka speaks of real, hidden, imaginary and virtual places. The map, the flags and the research help the viewer to understand their own territory, but also to stop and observe, imagine or recall.

The research and spotting of springs has been carried out by the students of the Faculty of Geography of Douala University. They identified about twenty places in different areas of the city. “But springs are everywhere” – Bili Bidjocka says – “there are springs under homes, and here, and in a number of different places. My springs are both real and imaginary. On the map and on the flags I wanted to acknowledge the importance of springs that are known, but I also wanted to invent new ones because the work of research is a never-ending process.

Everyone may report the presence of other springs, take pictures and tell about them. Bili Bidjocka’s work is in progress and do it yourself, therefore, with the contribution of the community, who is invited to add to the research of new opportunities of access to water.

(text by Iolanda Pensa)

New Walk Ways for New Bell – Faces of Water

Tuesday, 30 November, Kamiel Verschuren started the project New Walk Ways in New Bell – Faces of Water in Douala. The idea for this project came to his mind during a visit to the quarter New Bell in February 2010.

In New Bell and other quarters of Douala, the sewers alongside the streets are completely open and therefore filled with wandering garbage from the streets. The covers on the open sewers, whether they are made from wooden planks or concrete elements, have often been taken away, burned as fuel wood, or are just damaged by usage. They have not been replaced. In the rainy season, this non-functioning draining system often causes huge floods, and affects public health seriously. In the rainy season, the garbage that causes the sewer system to be clogged, rises together with the water level, allowing the water from the sewers to spread into the streets and into the houses, and allowing the water to mix with the fresh water resources.

On the New Walk Ways, large scale text fragments will be made, using black spray paint. To allow the rain to enter the sewer system but to prevent the garbage from entering it, small holes are drilled in the planks re-writing the texts fragments and making them durable. The collection of text fragments relate to the different Faces of Water, to its qualities as a substance, solid, liquid or gas, to its movement, to its reflective nature and its ability to follow any shape that contains it and still be of immense force.
Kamiel Verschuren will re-install about 1 kilometer of coverage on the open sewer system. The intention is not to make a sculpture or artistic object in front of someone’s doorstep, but to address the sense of collectivity in this neighborhood. This week, the first 100 meters of the new walk ways will be finished. In 2011, the next 900 meters will be made.

The work is realized with the help of four young people living in the neighborhood. Every now and then, passers-by spontaneously stop to help or just to have a very thorough look at the work. On the first day of work, many people living in the neighborhood expressed their appreciation. They felt the necessity of the new walk ways very strongly. “L’eau, c’est le sanité”, as an old lady commented: water is sanitation. Still people were throwing in garbage while the work on the system was in progress. For mentality to change, one needs more time and effort, but it is hoped this is a start in changing the way of thinking about water in the city. The expectation is that after some time people will start to feel their responsibility and will take control over their own conditions and act individually as well as collectively to improve their situation.

New Walk Ways in New Bell will be presented in New Bell during the SUD2010, on Thursday 9 December.

On the same day, the work of artists who also have been working in New Bell will be presented, i.e. Pascale Marthine Tayou, Loris Cecchini, Hervé Yamguen, Ato Malinda, and Tracey Rose.

Water - Advantage and Nuisance

Douala is the Cameroonian megapolis. Because of its location within the Gulf of Guinea and within the mangrove swamp at the bottom of the estuary of the Wouri River, the city has a singular relationship with water. This part of the world was mapped in the 16th century by the Portuguese explorers under the name of "Rio dos Camaroes" because of the numerous shrimps on the rib. It was then alternately baptized "Cameroons River" and "Cameroons Town" by the English and “Kamerunstadt” by the Germans. In 1901 it was renamed Douala in reference to the natives.

The cosmogony of the people of Douala and their economy were formerly based on the element of water. Due to the urban settlement initiated at the end of the 19th century by the Germans who conceived the city as a port facility, the original connection with the water source has been lost. Although until this day, the harbour remains a major asset for the economic capital of Cameroon, the river and its geniuses are still very present in the rituals, particularly during Ngondo, a yearly celebration of the Douala people, which takes place in December at the edge of the Wouri.

Douala has the privilege of being an equatorial city, a city that receives vast amounts of water from precipitation and irrigation. What should be an advantage becomes a nuisance. Indeed, every year, during the monsoon season, the numerous neighbourhoods located in the lower areas become submerged in water. Paradoxically, there is a permanent deficiency of drinkable water. The public network of water distribution, badly maintained and often failing, serves only a minority of city dwellers. The greater majority, who live in the disadvantaged and very precarious neighborhoods, have to find alternative solutions to have access to water (wells, drillings, emergent natural sources). This causes serious public health problems, particularly due to the lack of a main drainage system which causes the the soil to become badly polluted.

Didier Schaub, artistic director of Doual'art

something about Water

As all over the world, water plays an important role in Douala. The city originally grew from a couple of small villages on the banks of the Wouri river. The inhabitants of these villages were known as the Sawa, ‘the water people’. It is the general belief that the people from Douala arose from the water, and since then have been living from the water and with the water. It has always been an inextricable and important part of their lives.
Many years later, under the rule of German government in Cameroon (from 1884 until 1916), the harbors of Douala were built right on the waterfront, as a result of which the people from Douala no longer had a direct access to the water and were thus deprived from their original way of living. In the development of the city that followed, the many small rivers and canals within the city were cut off from the Wouri and from each other, leaving behind a non-functional infrastructure of small canals, creating annual problems to the most poor, and often illegal residential settlements within the city.