Atomium always struck me as a monument for its own sake. Brussels doesn’t have the tourist caché of neighboring capitals, and the 1958 World’s Fair’s tribute to the molecular structure of iron seems to grasp too hard at the glory of science (specifically metallurgy). Jacques Tati’s great film from the same year Mon Oncle masterfully satirizes this tendency of the postwar built environment to look smooth, metallic and utterly impervious to the negative influence of actual people.
Now that I’m one chapter into Matthew G. Stanard’s The Leopard, The Lion and the Cock: Colonial Monuments and Memories in Belgium (more posts on this excellent book will follow), I appreciate the symbolism of Atomium in a fresh way. Atomium is the expression of a hyperrational, technocratic society that still treats people like animals.
The “Belgian Congo” began with the 1876 Brussels Geographical Conference. King Leopold II hoped to situate himself as the organizer of the ongoing European exploration/conquest of equatorial Africa. But no international cooperation materialized. There were no bread and circuses back then either: the summit of talented scientists and geographers did not face the public. Not coincidentally, the Congo Free State was a personal possession of Leopold II, not of the Belgian people.
Stanard argues that Belgium’s fractured national identity cohered in part due to its ownership of the lucrative colony. The crazy quilt of a nation was stretched between three language communities, and couldn’t count on a charismatic monarchy or an inspiring Catholic church for too much longer. So to the extent that you could take pride in being Belgian, you probably had to look to the lovely resource extraction project being carried out in your name. The thing about the colony, though, is that it was not staffed by Belgians, and the great majority of the population (Leopold II included) would never set foot in the Congo. Maybe more significant than that is that Leopold II had to die before the project would be nationalized: it wasn’t till 1908 that the Congo Free State stopped being owned by one person.
So for a long time Belgian people were both uninterested (culturally) and disinterested (economically) in the Belgian Congo. But this changed by 1958. The World’s Fair had come to town and the community was invited to see the glories of the mission civilisatrice: Africans shipped north to wear costumes and perform “traditional” behavior for leering white crowds, in a cheeky presentation entitled “Kongorama.” The performers recognized their mistreatment and walked off the exposition. It was the last of the “human zoos” that had been a fixture of northern cities for decades. The Congo gained independence just two years afterward.
Salvador Dalí didn’t need to be present (though he reportedly was) for Expo 58 to be a surreal juxtaposition. A depraved monarch dangled seminaked, exoticized bodies as a cheap amusement, overshadowed by a colossal steel diagram. Nowadays the fairground hosts an attraction called Mini-Europe, which actually looks pretty cool and not racist at all.
Further Reading:
Daniel Boffey, “Belgium comes to terms with ‘human zoos’ of its colonial past,” The Guardian, April 2018.
Matthew G. Stanerd, The Leopard, The Lion, and the Cock: Colonial Monuments and Memories in Belgium,(2019).