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After releasing the sensational film Enjoy Poverty in 2008, and sparking much debate in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Europe on the topic of the “industry against poverty”, the Dutch artist Renzo Martens has just released a new documentary, the The film features the Congolese Plantation Workers Art Circle (CATPC, Cercle d art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise), a cooperative located in a former plantation owned by the multinational Unilever at Lusanga. It tells the story of artists from CATPC who produce clay sculptures, which are then 3D scanned, sent to a New York museum, and reproduced in chocolate. The cooperative’s proceeds are used to buy back land in Africa, depleted after decades of exploitation by Unilever. The CATPC then goes on to carry out sustainable agroforestry projects. ....
Full disclosure: four years after watching Renzo Martens’s documentary Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008), which served as shock therapy for the art-world in its time, I am still traumatized by it. The point the Dutch artist wanted to convey with this film was that the overexploited residents of remote areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) would do well to enjoy their supposedly most valuable resource: poverty. In the film, Martens sets up a workshop and encourages some impoverished photographers to commodify and sell iterations of their precariousness (such as photographs of starving children) to the highest bidder – just like those Western photojournalists who sensationalize death for a living. Many gruelling scenes later, the experiment fails, but Martens still hosts a sort of party around a purpose-built neon sign that reads: ‘Enjoy Poverty Please’. ....
Full disclosure: four years after watching Renzo Martens’s documentary Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008), which served as shock therapy for the art-world in its time, I am still traumatized by it. The point the Dutch artist wanted to convey with this film was that the overexploited residents of remote areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) would do well to enjoy their supposedly most valuable resource: poverty. In the film, Martens sets up a workshop and encourages some impoverished photographers to commodify and sell iterations of their precariousness (such as photographs of starving children) to the highest bidder – just like those Western photojournalists who sensationalize death for a living. Many gruelling scenes later, the experiment fails, but Martens still hosts a sort of party around a purpose-built neon sign that reads: ‘Enjoy Poverty Please’. ....