Review of Renzo Martens, “Episode 3: Enjoy Poverty”
(I apologize for the poor quality of this video sample, I took it at Manifesta using my still camera, hope it gives you a little bit of an idea about the piece…)
I first saw Dutch artist Renzo Martens work at Manifesta 7 this past year. The short three-minute video titled “(fragment from) Episode 3” showed the artist in the Congo teaching a group of Congolese wedding photographers that photographing disaster and poverty is a more economically viable option. I was drawn to this video because of the questions it raised on the sincerity and morality of the artist, questions that I too was confronting in some of my projects with my former students.
This past week Valentina and I saw the completed 90 minute film by Martens, “Episode 3: Enjoy your Poverty” at the Human Rights Nights Film Festival at the Cineteca in Bologna. We were both somewhat thrown off by the context of watching what we believed to be an art video in a 90 minute film format in film festival in a movie theater. In the theater it became a documentary about Martens voyage through the Congo, and as such was difficult to read the video itself as the artwork, and so it became about his performance. In the longer film, the question of the function of the video camera seems to betray Martens’ further for a few reason that I will outline below.
The driving question of the work, the one Martens puts to the test repeatedly, is whether poverty is a commodifiable resource and if so, what would be the consequences if the owners of this resource, the poor, controlled it. It’s a strong question that not only calls to question the exploitation of natural resources in third world countries, but also directly challenges the Humanitarian industry that seems to thrive in war torn and poverty stricken places. In this question, it seems pretty sharp that it is included in a human rights festival, and act as somewhat of a self-questioning.
Martens’ work takes this question up in three storylines. The first, most likely the original plan with which the artist set off to the Congo (as it required preplanning), is a neon lit sign reading “enjoy poverty” that Martens carried with him from Europe and hauls through the Congo, installing it in tiny impoverished villages. Using the neon light as an oracle or fire, he brings to the natives an impetus for claiming their resource, poverty. This is in one way the “art”, as Martens installs it in the villages and with the poor children dancing around, captures it on video for documentation of a site specific work.
The second storyline, the one excerpted at Manifesta 7, is his attempt to convince some local photographers that it is more economically viable for them to follow suit with the work of international photographers and to photograph corpses, raped women, and malnourished children for sale to the western market, instead of their current business of photographing celebrations for the locals. After leading the ragtag group of photographers through a hospital and a refugee camp (clearly putting them in a state of unease) the plan is shattered when a western hospital director rejects Martens request on their behalf to photograph on the premise. The reasoning, in the end, comes down to a question of the perceived quality of the photographs.
The third story looks at the living conditions on a western owned cocoa and palm oil plantation, mostly through the eyes of an employee who laments his misery and displays his malnourished children to the camera.
In each of the scenarios Martens is a performer, acting what we believe is a morally reprehensible and naïve character as a way to exaggerate and point back at the industry of humanitarian aid that he is critiquing. For the most part his critique, questioning, and performance is followed through on quite convincingly, to where we are able to reflect back on to his performance larger questions of morality as they relate to our role in the west and the humanitarian crisis in the Congo. In the end though, his hypothesis remains somewhat unsatisfying, as he doesn’t follow through to a logical conclusion. In these circumstances we come to question not his commitment as artist, but his commitment to his performed character, and thus to the actions that would make sense for that character to do within the performance narrative. We witness Martens drag his neon sign around to install in villages and float down the river in a Fitcarraldean gesture. But the adventure ends when he invites a handful of foreign journalists to document the event. Likewise, he abandons his plan for the local photographers, and the photographers themselves, after just one low level rejection in one hospital. Hardly the way we would believe the performer, who confidently presented the economics to the locals, would have concluded the event.
We are left with question of performativity in the service of the video medium. The piece concludes when we witness Martens reading an official e-mail that calls his actions morally reprehensible and that his UN approved press accreditation revoked. His defiant last act is to exaggerate the work that he believes is expected by the humanitarian community and he serves a large dinner to the plantation worker and his malnourished family. While the action is an obvious and ironic “in your face” to the humanitarian community, it backfires artistically by shifting the language of Martens the performer. At the moment that he acknowledges the international community in a real sense, he begins to speak their language, the language of the real, as opposed to his performed language. It is in the performed language that the piece functions as a work on morals, not a work of morals. Martens acknowledges a moral responsibility that is outside the fictive reality of his performed self.
This brings us to the key to the entire work: the role of the camera. Throughout the video, the filming is done almost exclusively by Martens, with his presence behind and in front of the camera constantly made visible. At moments when someone else is filming he clearly acknowledges the handing off of the camera to the other. The artist with camera pointed on him or as extension of self is essential to the function of the piece as art video. The way Martens uses the camera is the logical extension of the performed ego. We understand that the performed Martens uses the camera to exploit his morally questionable ventures, while also using it to probe the morality of the international community.
There are two moments that we are watching a camera view that is outside that of the artist. Toward the beginning, when Martens is attending a World Bank Meeting in Kinshasa, we watch a seemingly objective camera follow the proceedings until we switch to Martens’ camera as he steps up to ask a question during the press conference. The second moment, at the very end, the video closes with a long shot of Martens’ raft floating down the river with the glowing neon letters spelling out “enjoy poverty.” At this moment we understand that we are clearly outside the view of Martens the performer and his camera. In this cinematic final shot Martens switches the language of the work from video to cinema, and ties up the narratives to bring the piece to a neat conclusion. In this final shot it makes sense for the placement of the piece in a film festival, but more detrimental, it brings into question, no longer his morality, but his integrity. We are left questioning the sincerity of his performer’s deceit. Essential to the power of the piece is that we understand the actions of the performer to be Martens form of intervention. By taking the camera out of himself, we begin to wonder how far did he really go in his performance. Was he really deceiving people with his performance, or was it just acted out for the camera when the record button was on? Were the other people complicit, and are we as viewers the only ones meant to be deceived? Every edit becomes a question mark, and the potency of the first person video is lost.
