Episode III- Enjoy Poverty
RENZO MARTENS: EPISODE III- 'Enjoy Poverty'
Production 2008. Has been shown in Documentary Film Festival, exhibitions, at Documenta and various other locations.Last night and after having waited for 3 months I watched the above film. Many conflicting sentiments were felt during the screening and you could hear angry wispering amongst the spectators. This was followed by a Q&A, in which the artist was questioned in the LSE auditorium. Martens an individual of great composure and detachment has created quite a stir in the art world and film community; a film which is reiterating basically sentiments expressed by critics of the non governmental and aid sector for quite some time. For me it is not what he says but how he says it and the messages that the spectator carries with him. As he was being applauded, he instructed the audience to stop clapping and do something about a reality that we forget we are completely complecent with. With our daily cup of coffee, the luxury diamonds and the insistence to forget that our enjoyment is based on the sustained impoverishment of millions of individuals throughout the developing world.
Episode III – ‘Enjoy Poverty’ is the second in a series of three films by Martens in which he raises issues regarding contemporary image production. The films prompts the viewer to think about the construction of a documentary and the role of the maker in it, and the responsibility of the viewers themselves. Martens filmed the first part of the series in Chechnya, where he looks for diversion from the disappointments of romance among the ruins and victims of the war.
A film essentially aimed for the gallery space, the bienalle and the film festival, it has received wide criticism and has created a certain amount of controversy. He has been likened to film maker Warner Herzog because of the scenic similarities to Aguirre, Fidzceraldo etc and the likeness that the artist/ performer has to actor Klauss Kinski and how the shots are framed.
For Episode III Martens travelled for two years with his video camera in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a terrain deeply marked by humanitarian disaster. Martens shows how development aid and Western photographers produce an image of this situation. His film confronts the public with the fact that the Africans themselves do not profit from the images that foreign photographers take of them. On the contrary: like luxury foods and basic commodities like rubber and coffee, the images of poverty - their most lucrative export product - are also out of their reach, being exclusively exploited by the Western ‘poverty industry’. As an answer to this injustice, Martens starts an emancipation project for Congolese photographers – a project that is doomed to failure and which will produce the inevitable disappointment.
The text below has been taken from the Wilkinson Gallery, London exhbition pamphlet, where the film was shown in January and February 2009.
'Above all it is a literary interpretation of the chaos and madness in a land where the natural resources are almost inexhaustible and the inhabitants almost without rights. The connecting
thread in Episode III is Martens' journey through the interior of the Congo. From the central Congo, where plantation workers live in wretched conditions and child mortality is high, the artist travels together with his crew of bearers to the east of the country, where guerrillas are engaged in a war with Western corporations that are extracting the local raw materials – corporations supported by UN forces, with Doctors Without Borders in their wake.
What solutions can Martens suggest for the problems of this land?
It becomes increasingly clear that the egocentric artist, who feels himself akin to romantic spirits such as Yves Klein and Neil Young, can only make a purely symbolic contribution. In doing so, he holds a mirror up to Western development aid, and thereby also the Western viewer, in
which the moral dilemmas are outlined mercilessly. Before doing that, he is equally implacable in first sketching the systemic humanitarian crisis in the Congo in excruciating detail.
The hour and a half long film by Martens is a documentary in which the maker himself is constantly present as a performance artist. Martens not only conceived the idea: he is the cameraman, and a reporter and political activist at the same time. With this personal presence, Episode III provides an alternative for the ostensible objectivity in documentary work by both visual artists and filmmakers.'
As some of you who know me well will know, I hardly ever say I like something. But I will say it about this film!
This film has been controversial not only in its reception by the general public, which many find offensive and accuse Martens of thinking he has powers of divine intervention, but by the art's community. Within the art circuit and international community the artist has been said to be exploiting the art market's increasing demand and wish for authentically produced politically engaged art. The artist conveyed the idea of agency, power structures and the strong hold of consumerism on the western viewer in an effective way. By allowing us to experience the feelings of anger towards a world that is badly organized, he leads the audience into a realisation that it is not him that they should be angry with but at the world order that only sets up aid programs only so that 80% of it can be directly returned to the country that originally provided it.
Let's all act instead of clap!!
For Episode III Martens travelled for two years with his video camera in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a terrain deeply marked by humanitarian disaster. Martens shows how development aid and Western photographers produce an image of this situation. His film confronts the public with the fact that the Africans themselves do not profit from the images that foreign photographers take of them. On the contrary: like luxury foods and basic commodities like rubber and coffee, the images of poverty - their most lucrative export product - are also out of their reach, being exclusively exploited by the Western ‘poverty industry’. As an answer to this injustice, Martens starts an emancipation project for Congolese photographers – a project that is doomed to failure and which will produce the inevitable disappointment.
The text below has been taken from the Wilkinson Gallery, London exhbition pamphlet, where the film was shown in January and February 2009.
'Above all it is a literary interpretation of the chaos and madness in a land where the natural resources are almost inexhaustible and the inhabitants almost without rights. The connecting
thread in Episode III is Martens' journey through the interior of the Congo. From the central Congo, where plantation workers live in wretched conditions and child mortality is high, the artist travels together with his crew of bearers to the east of the country, where guerrillas are engaged in a war with Western corporations that are extracting the local raw materials – corporations supported by UN forces, with Doctors Without Borders in their wake.
What solutions can Martens suggest for the problems of this land?
It becomes increasingly clear that the egocentric artist, who feels himself akin to romantic spirits such as Yves Klein and Neil Young, can only make a purely symbolic contribution. In doing so, he holds a mirror up to Western development aid, and thereby also the Western viewer, in
which the moral dilemmas are outlined mercilessly. Before doing that, he is equally implacable in first sketching the systemic humanitarian crisis in the Congo in excruciating detail.
The hour and a half long film by Martens is a documentary in which the maker himself is constantly present as a performance artist. Martens not only conceived the idea: he is the cameraman, and a reporter and political activist at the same time. With this personal presence, Episode III provides an alternative for the ostensible objectivity in documentary work by both visual artists and filmmakers.'
As some of you who know me well will know, I hardly ever say I like something. But I will say it about this film!
This film has been controversial not only in its reception by the general public, which many find offensive and accuse Martens of thinking he has powers of divine intervention, but by the art's community. Within the art circuit and international community the artist has been said to be exploiting the art market's increasing demand and wish for authentically produced politically engaged art. The artist conveyed the idea of agency, power structures and the strong hold of consumerism on the western viewer in an effective way. By allowing us to experience the feelings of anger towards a world that is badly organized, he leads the audience into a realisation that it is not him that they should be angry with but at the world order that only sets up aid programs only so that 80% of it can be directly returned to the country that originally provided it.
Let's all act instead of clap!!
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