Synaesthesia, music, and cinema

Baloji Tshiani is a polymath artist, known first for his rap projects in the band Starflam. He rapidly went on to participate in many other artistic projects. He has directed several movie clips, notably Peau de Chagrin/Bleu de Nuit and Le jour d’après: Siku Ya Baadaye . His first feature film, Augure ( Omen ), won the Cannes’ Prix de la nouvelle voix award in 2023, after his movie was revealed at the ‘Un Certain Regard’ section of the festival. This led Augure to represent Belgium in the 2024 Oscar ceremony. He has published four albums, Hotel Impala, Kinshasa Succursale, 137 Avenue Kaniam a, and Augure , the latter based on his feature film. In this interview, Alexis Finet and Martin Munro discuss Baloji Tshiani’s work, and his relationship with questions of synaesthesia, race, and cinema, amongst other things.

This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence through the support of the Winthrop-King Institute: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .