AMANI (2015)

On a hilltop in the north east of Tanzania, German colonists founded the organic-agricultural institute Amani at the start of the twentieth century. After the First World War, the British took over this colony and transformed the institute into a highly regarded research facility for malaria. In their attempts to involve the local community in their research, the scientists were faced with the diametrically opposed worldview of the villagers: for some the institute was a vision of progress, but many saw the scientists as practitioners of black magic. Over a period of two months, Evgenia Arbugaeva photographed the laboratory which is no longer in use. Through the eyes of John, the loyal laboratory assistant, she captures both the significance of his role as well as that of the institute. In doing so, she reveals the rituals and routines of a once ordered existence and its subsequent demise.