Installation

To speak of witnessing genocide and ecocide from afar, in the diaspora, is to speak of living with a wound that is both immediate and mediated: a catastrophe that is happening now but that one experiences through screens, family calls, community whispers, and shared embodied memory. The genocide and ecocide in eastern Congo are systematically obscured or minimized in global media. The term Genocost exposes the paradox that what is celebrated as progress in the Global North is inseparable from violence in Congo. It reveals the underside of modernity: that genocide and ecocide are not failures of progress but its hidden conditions. To speak of Genocost, then, is to demand that progress be reimagined as no longer at the expense of Congolese lives and lands, but through solidarities that refuse to normalize this criminal sacrifice that subsidizes progress. Survival, in this sense, is not only physical but psychic, ethical, and collective. But how long is it going to take? This question doesn’t call for an answer but expresses deep frustration and impatience because it is often used to delay or excuse inaction. By the time James Baldwin asks “how much time do you want for your progress?”, he has emphasized that waiting for progress has cost generations of people, their time and opportunities. A forever delay that doesn’t seem to have any end. Western time is made the primary solution. Just more time…But the time for meaningful change is now, and further delays are unacceptable. We don’t need more time. We don’t need more martyrs. And we don’t need more heroes.