Café Kuba: Who Dared to Awaken the Dead Memory

A mobile coffee cart traverses public space in Kinshasa, where the echoes of traumatic events remain palpable, yet where new forms of resistance and creativity are emerging.

As an artist working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, filmmaker, artist and composer David Shongo operates within a constantly shifting political and social landscape. The recent escalation of conflict in eastern Congo – where M23 rebels seized major cities such as Goma and Bukavu in early 2025 – affects daily life and limits the space to work, think and collaborate. Shongo therefore moves between the roles of artist, witness and at times refugee, searching for flexible modes of creation that fit this reality.

Café Kuba (2025) is a direct response to these circumstances. We follow a coffee vendor through Kinshasa, as the city becomes a living memory: the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, foreign interference and recurrent uprisings continue to shape the present.

Shongo’s work has been shown at Ars Electronica, DOK Leipzig and the Bangkok Art Biennale, among others. As director of the Festival Pianos de Kinshasa and co-founder of Studio1960, he explores the relationship between art, technology and community. Café Kuba, winner of the Ars Electronica State of the ART(ist) Prize 2025, builds convincingly on this foundation.

– Eva Langerak

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