“My purpose at that time was to expand my experience of the world and to immerse myself as deeply as I could in powerful events that I thought would begin to help me understand the world, and myself, in larger ways. Looking back, it's difficult to imagine my life without the Congo now.” WorldHelpingPurposeDifficultPowerfulImagineHelp MeLooking BackCongo Author:Anjan Sundaram
“I certainly think that many of the themes, and many of the ways that I wrote about Congo, will continue to live on in my work. One of the fundamental aspects of my work is for myself and the reader to see the world that they think they know in a different way.” ThinkingWorldDifferentCongo Author:Anjan Sundaram
“My own chief curiosity is to go into the world and explore as richly as I can, and as deeply as I can, and understand its richness as fully as I can, and that certainly will live on.” WorldCuriosity Author:Anjan Sundaram
“In abstract mathematics or abstract art, the purpose is to describe inner states of our mind, and to explore the limits of our own imagination and our capacity for creativity. While this has some applications in the world, I think it leads to a distance from the world. Going to Congo was for me an act of seeking proximity, of breaking that distance. With abstraction, which is brilliant and vain, you divorce yourself from any kind of proximity to other people.” PeopleThinkingWorldMindKindArtPurposeImaginationCreativityMathematicsDistanceDivorceBrilliantVainAbstractApplicationCongo Author:Anjan Sundaram
“I chose Congo in order to become close to a place that we had turned away from. It isn't present in our imaginations, in the stories we tell each other. Yet it's relevant to our lives and to our worlds, in a practical way. Congo supplies raw materials for the things that we use on a daily basis. We are intimately linked to Congo, economically. We're linked to it through human events that are occurring there, that affect all of us, and yet you don't find narratives of Congo present in our lives.” WorldImaginationRelevantCongo Author:Anjan Sundaram