In the film Trapped in the Dream of the Other (from which this production still is drawn) a camera navigates through what the artists themselves have called a performance: in the summer of 2016, custom-made fireworks were set off in an open-air mine near Numbi in the Eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The fireworks had been imported from Liuyang in Hunan Province, the epicentre of that industry in the People’s Republic of China. Shipping the fireworks was a kind of twenty-first century Iliad, requiring several circumnavigations of the globe, engagements with its bureaucracies, and several years’ preparation. Shipping ammunition might have been easier.

Across a number of Cohen & Van Balen’s recent works, the duo trace virtual and material connections and trade relations between China and various African nations. These works demonstrate how natural resources are being extracted in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to enact technological desires elsewhere, exploring how we are all connected in numerous ways to the ongoing exploitation of the region.