Wojtek Doroszuk
Prince | video 18’48’’, 2014
Wojtek Doroszuk met Elohim ‘Prince’ Ntsiete during one of his trips to Congo. The teenager spontaneously joined a jazz band from Kinshasa during their show in Brazzaville, enriching their performance with his Michael Jackson-inspired dance routine and costume reminiscent of the legendary singer. Doroszuk and Prince met again a few years later, in 2013, when the Polish artist returned to Brazzaville to make a film about Elohim, who had since become a local celebrity. What began as an innocent impersonation of Michael Jackson went on to become the essence of the boy’s lifestyle. Prince’s everyday life seems like a ritualized performance: every morning he carefully shines his shoes and cleans his glittery costume, puts on white gloves, pulls his star hat over his forehead and, dressed like that, hits the town. For a few hours, he turns into an embodiment of his idol. Prince believes that when he dances, he is in direct contact with God, that God actually dances through him. On the streets of a town that has seen numerous wars his otherness acts like a magnet, but because his dancing brings joy and courage, he does not incite aggression or sneers from the inhabitants. Prince is Brazzaville’s last romantic. Doroszuk decided to capture a fragment of the life of this amazing character on film: take after take, we see the subsequent scenes of Prince’s everyday routine. In the final scene, Elohim – in his MJ costume – dances to Le Bucheron played by local musicians. The song was composed by the legendary singer Franklin Boukaka who is often dubbed the Congolese Frank Sinatra. Le Bucheron is a bitter reckoning of the country’s colonial past and its contemporary “independence and freedom”, which – for the average Congolese – are tantamount to poverty and corruption.
During this year’s NARRACJE, together with Wojtek Doroszuk we are going to bring back the memory of Prince to show that freedom begins in each and every one of us, and we are the ones responsible for it.
location: green area on Kwietna Street
Wojtek Doroszuk (b. 1980) is a visual artist and filmmaker, mostly involved in documentary productions. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow (Interdisciplinary Studio of Zbigniew Sałaj and Grzegorz Sztwiertnia) and continued his arts education at Istanbul’s Sabanci Universitesi. He is interested in outsiders, unique figures and original places. His films have been shown at numerous exhibitions and presentations in Poland and abroad (e.g. in the US, UK, France and Germany). Doroszuk is a two-time winner of the scholarship awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National heritage (2004, 2009), as well as the Geppert Award (2007) and the Audience Award of the prestigious Views competition (2009), among others. He lives and works in France.
