Critique in Practice: Renzo Martens’ "Episode III: Enjoy Poverty"

Anthony Downey, Els Roelandt

    Research output: Book/ReportBookpeer-review

    Abstract

    Investigating the economic value of one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s most lucrative exports (namely, poverty), Renzo Martens’ provocative film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty (2008) remains a landmark intervention into debates about contemporary art’s relationship to exploitative economies. The contributors to this publication explore the film’s legacy and how it relates to the politics of representation, uses of the documentary form, art criticism, the deployment of humanitarian aid, the impact of extractive forms of globalized capital, and the neoliberal politics of decolonization. The unconventional representation of acute immiseration throughout Enjoy Poverty generated far-from-resolved disputes about how deprivation is portrayed in Western mainstream media and global cultural institutions. Using a range of approaches, this volume reconsiders that portrayal and how the film’s reception led Martens to found a long-term program, the Institute for Human Activities.

    Contributions by ARIELLA AÏSHA AZOULAY, PIETER VAN BOGAERT, JELLE BOUWHUIS, EVA BAROIS DE CAEVEL, J. J. CHARLESWORTH, T. J. DEMOS, ANGELA DIMITRAKAKI, ANTHONY DOWNEY, CHARLES ESCHE, DAN FOX, MATTHIAS DE GROOF, XANDER KARSKENS, J. A. KOSTER, KYVELI LIGNOU-TSAMANTANI, SUHAIL MALIK, RENZO MARTENS, NINA MÖNTMANN, RENÉ NGONGO, LAURENS OTTO, PAUL O’KANE, NIKOLAUS PERNECZKY, ANA TEIXEIRA PINTO, KOLJA REICHERT, ELS ROELANDT, RUBEN DE ROO, KĄRÎ’KẠCHÄ SEID’OU, GREGORY SHOLETTE, SANNE SINNIGE, EMILIA TERRACCIANO, NATO THOMPSON, NIELS VAN TOMME, FRANK VANDE VEIRE, EYAL WEIZMAN, VIVIAN ZIHERL, ARTUR ŻMIJEWSKI less
    Associate Editor ELS ROELANDT
    Original languageEnglish
    Place of PublicationBerlin
    PublisherSternberg Press
    Commissioning bodyVan Abbe Museum
    Number of pages372
    ISBN (Print)978-3-95679-505-3
    Publication statusPublished (VoR) - 1 Sept 2019

    Keywords

    • decolonisation
    • neocolonialism
    • neoliberalism
    • globalisation
    • art institutions
    • humanitarianism

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