Last (B)Order

Afrofuturism, Telling the future of Central Africa
To tell the story of the future, Cameroonian filmmaker Jean_Pierre Bekolo was met by Gabonese artist Nathalie Mba Bikoro in Bitam (Gabon-Cameroon-Equatorial Guinea border town), a 4-hour drive from Yaounde. Together, they imagined this little story of the future in the CEEMAC zone.

The day after the last presidents leave their castles, the broadcast will be the revolution. 

Breaking News: The Guardian is Dead!! Last Broadcast from Border TV

“Sunday morning from the last Border TV we report that the Guardian, by the name of Marcel, has died in the dawn of holly day. The Border is on stand-lock as people are waiting to cross over for Church, return to cultivate their plantations and to go fishing on the north, south, east and west crossings. The stand-still trailing the concrete roads for over 360 miles is envisaged to last over the next 24 hours as the No-Visa-Allowance Foutu peoples are drawing the last border lines around the remnant body of the Guardian. Reports suggests that the death of this century’s old line-drawer’s institutional tradition of territory and monitoring between the four countries will push new market economies and settlements further south and create cracks in the concrete architectures that were so well protected by the Guardian. Local WWF organization have released a warning statement on the envisaged changing ecosystem by a rapid mass movement of trade and influx of people over the area that will create new peripheries engulfing the territories of the Fontu peoples. Local crossovers say to Border TV this will end a tradition and protection of the metropolis and carves a deep darkness on the continent’s history whilst the majority expressed that they will not return to their settlements and find alternative homelands beyond the former Border and cultivate plantations in the new peripheries. The contours of the Guardian will temporarily mark a Monument to a tradition of Broadcast and metropolis that is the Border now slowly becoming a tower of roses…..”

Border TV is the most popular television channel transmitted between four borders in West Africa. These borders have been protected by Marcel, a guardian of the four borders between Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Congo. Marcel, born in Bitam and former fish-seller in Yaoudé, has been the sole figure responsible for the movement of populations crossing these borders for trade, births, weddings and funerals. He has stamped over 500,000,000 visas in paper and electronic passports and blocked over 900,000,000 sans-papiers. Marcel can speak the former slave languages in French, English, Spanish as well as the respected tongues principally of Fang, Mbeti, Myene, Nzebi, Bapounou, Eschira, Bandjabi, Kingwana, Tshiluba and Bubi. In seven decades he has mastered these languages and perfectionalised their creole by creating new grammars so that all who crossed over the borders could converse with him and never cheat him. These creole people created their own state for which their language was their common passport and access to the borders. This language was founded in 2081 as Foutu. It was the only spoken word and rhythms heard for kilometres throughout the forests for which the fauna created its own ecosystem of migration and pollination.

Marcel creates and destroys borders at his own will with words, sticks, stones, channel clicks and volume playbacks from his TV monitor. He is also the loyal subject to the voice on Border TV, faithfully and religiously following and enacting tasks. Border TV, broadcasted in sophisticated Foutu, creates its own channel news of events happening in the vacinities of its borders. From this broadcast, Marcel forecasts the lines of borders, erasing, re-ordering, re-tracing lines and re-evaluating conditions for visas and access to each country. One season, people must cross left, another season, people must cross right, and the next season you must walk backwards. Marcel is a master of all languages, surpasses the life of elephants and his mere breath would make the crossers trip over the lines.

Marcel’s favourite show on Border TV is Système_D. A series of beautifully scripted practical tasks that never asks him to think, but will train him into a Master player of definition, spoken word and defense. To play in Système_D you have to be an eligible citizen, that can walk left or right and you must be able to enact tasks of the future with concrete; concrete ideas, concrete roads, concrete houses, concrete waters, concrete stations, concrete churches, concrete visions. More concrete, more performance.

The cross-overs spend their lives passing the borders. Plantation farms increased in abundance after tax exports of goods became too high 63 years ago, which gave rise to the Plantation_Schools across the continent training generations in business, entrepreneurships, management, science, medecine, ecosystems. Cultivation was no longer necessary for exportation therefore taxes of goods were abolished. People crossed over the Border to come back to their plantations to cultivate the land, to fish and hunt becoming one of the most popular trends of this new century.  Petrol was no longer exported abroad and was used locally to run energy efficiently in domestic homes.  Every former State on the continent had used their resources for local sustainability therefore transforming consumerist patterns and weakening liberalist politics. The Border is the centre of the Earth, sitting under the Equator, the land flourishes with abundant energy used for domestic housing and technologies. This magnetism of energy under the Earth between land and sea means that when local resources are used locally and not exported or exploited under the old colonial method that was once Europe in the older century, this magnetism of energy increases over the Earth’s radius naturally and influences the ecosystems, animals and plants that we eat.  This cycle over five decades has led to a detoxification of pollution that was created by former Oil & Gas companies like Shell and BP.

Marcel has everything he can ask for; 4 wives and 13 children to his heir living on the island under the bridge hidden between the Border. This is the only place where no one would ever need a Visa. But the people of the land never learned how to swim. On this island, which became homeland, is an ecosystem that does not belong to the Border. An ecosystem of polygamy where structures are practiced democratically in the knowledge of politics, family, land cultivation, food and prayer. Traditions of ancestors returns as functions of knowledge and medecine which was claimed primitive to the old West and abolished through generations of 20^th century genocides and ill exploitations of the lands by foreign and illegal industries. There is a 24 hour channel radio called République_Culture. The only places in the world where radio is not forbidden. Above the river on the concrete road between the border lines is Open_School. The centre metropolis where one can learn everything in life and begin at young and old age, there is no graduation process, as administration was cancelled by Cameroonian and Gabonese old states 45 years before. This means that authoritative positions such as teachers do not exists anymore, schools are a direct practice of democracy where young and old sit together and listen to each others’ stories to deconstruct old histories and create new ones. The students of Open_School do not travel by car to the building because automobiles are too expensive to run and public transport is replaced by one-man standing flying drones. Open_School is open to men and women, boys and girls, the sick and the healthy, day and night. Further down along the Border is Quartier_Parcours. In Foutu tradition, it is believed that evolution should be practiced not by knowledge but also by body. Football remains an integral sport to the communities and tribes and national football matches are followed and practiced on the streets refereed by the hairdressers, the barbers, the market dealers, the kiosk holders and anyone living in the narrow streets of Quartier_Parcours. Players run and climb in between walls, rooftops, skipping in between gaps, sliding over mud pools in the rainy seasons. The history of the generations that grew up in Quartier_Parcours was responsible for the closure of FIFA in 2067 in Zürich to be replaced in Tanzania by FANTA. Every World Cup has been hosted by African cities since the last 24 years which is significantly responsible for the high Northern-Southern migration in 15 years. 

The Border is operated by no presidents, this was abolished 34 years ago. Democracy is practiced participatory amongst the populations of the Border, but poorly practiced in domestic spaces, notably in the kitchen. Police sections remain few as violence by the State was prohibited after the 2034 during post-colonial risings led by SWAPO. Marcel is a simple man, he is also feared, respected and hated. He operates his life according to the daily slogans of his TV screen. His homeland is border-blind but he finds meaning and purpose in his job of defining lines and stamping law on paper. Marcel has crossed over 3,600,900 borders, closed 7,000 and drew 6,000,300 borders in his own lifetime. Last Border TV is televised and the Border is left incomplete and open.

On November 2133, Marcel is found dead by waiting passport holders on the other side of the Border. Nobody can move. Marcel has drawn the last border, it is incomplete. The Foutu populations do not move as before. They are starved of definition, law and movement. Nothing anymore can decide who of them all can cross over. All of the tradition of what they knew dies along with Marcel. Overtime the metropolitan that is the Border has no more centre. And a new language creates, the Periphery. Slowly the crossers over the Border from the four countries settle together, melancholic of the loss of this figure. There is big regret for what is lost. However is our regret for man or for the Border?

“It is reportedly confirmed that 29 hours after the death of the Guardian, the Border Metropolis has been erased by the fast migration of the populations, now a No-Visa Zone, electronic Passport holders and Sans-Papiers are allowed to move in any directions they choose, coming back to families long separated, allowing a return of an ecosystem of polygamy, finding new settlements and plantations. Funeral processions have not been released by République_Culture. Border TV channel rights have been transferred over to former Spanish Equatorial Guinea under the old Shell constitution. The sector of the Border is stateless and legally constitutes no-line control between the 4 countries. This is the last broadcast from Border TV…”