A couple of weeks ago I went to see ‘Episode 3 – ‘Enjoy Poverty’ (2009, 90 min) by the Dutch artist Renzo Martens who spent two years filming in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The film was screened at the Tate Modern and was followed by a discussion between the artist, T.J. Demos and Tamar Garb (both from the University College London’s Department of Art History).
Last year, I managed to watch some of the film (a poor quality copy on DVD) and it was clearly quite disturbing. However, without watching the whole thing it was difficult to tell what Martens’ intentions were. The film had been shown at my university and the person who lent me the copy (given to him by the artist so no pirating involved!) – told me that the audience reaction was quite negative.
“They did not understand the film. They though that the film was real, that Martens was laughing at Congolese people and making fun of their poverty, their suffering.”
This could not be further from Martens’ intentions but it is not an unreasonable reaction to the film which, described as a work of ‘documentary art’, it is a mixture of Borat-style mockery, conceptual art and a Michael Moore/Nick Broomfield documentary, leaving the viewer puzzled every time Martens crosses the line between the genres.
Below is a summary of the film – described as “an investigation of the emotional and economic value of Africa’s most lucrative export: filmed poverty” – and the Q&A that followed.
The alleviation poverty industry
The film starts with Martens saying;
“You can’t give them [the Congolese people] anything they don’t already have. You shouldn’t give them anything they don’t have. You should train them, empower them. There are new opportunities, new markets, new products”.
With these words, taken from a leaflet of an NGO, the artist undertakes a journey to launch a programme that will help the poor in the DRC become aware of their most important source of money: poverty. Martens wants them to realise that they are excluded from making money out of this ‘natural resource’ while others, coming from the West, are taking advantage of it. Martens wants the poor to profit as well.
With this development project in mind, he travels to a village in Central Congo by foot via long and muddy roads. Martens, who is the main narrator as well as cameraman, performs here the role of the colonial master travelling with porters who bring two enormous metal boxes. At some point, he sings “A man needs a maid” by Neil Young.
At the end of the trip, the boxes are opened and their content revealed: little pieces of crystal neon brought from Europe and a generator to create a luminous piece of conceptual art with the words ‘Enjoy, please, poverty’. Then, Martens explains with a monotone, distant voice to the villagers that, with this luminous advert, he wants to publicise new ideas: Congolese people need to be resigned to their poverty and they must be satisfied with it. They must be aware that their reality is not going to change and they must be happy because they are doing something useful: helping people in developed countries to ‘feel good’.
The journey is intercut with other scenes in which the artist performs multiple characters, recreating some of the roles performed by Western people in Africa: the missionary, the teacher, the humanitarian aid worker, the journalist, the photographer, etc. His roles adopt most of the time pedantic and patronising attitudes. The characters, all performed as the real Renzo Martens, are never portrayed sympathetically.
Through his performances and the numerous encounters that take place in the film, no one from the ‘poverty alleviation industry’ or corporations seem spared from Martens’ criticism: the World Bank and its acceptance that aid is the main economic resource for this country “because it is normal when a country is developing after a conflict”; the UN peacekeepers concentrated mainly in areas where big corporations dig to get gold, diamonds or coltan; the plantation owner whose local workers do not earn enough to feed their children and for whom the death of 16 children out of 1000 due to malnutrition “is not so bad and maybe it is not because they do not have money but because the father drinks or …you know”; humanitarian NGOs leaving an area that still needs aid; international bodies running camps for internally displaced people (IDP) where all the tents are stamped with logos, “visibility, I suppose” – tells a UNHCR representative..
Martens, through the film, challenges the solution that is currently offered by different organizations aiming to end poverty. He questions the whole system of NGOs and international bodies, based in the West, created to alleviate poverty and he argues that “there is no intention in making real structural changes”. The film goes in the same direction of some recent thinking related to the effectiveness of the ‘aid industry’ such as the book entitled ‘Dead Aid’ by Dambia Moyo , William Easterly’s ‘The White Man’s Burden’, and even Ha-Joon Chang’s ‘Bad Samaritans.’
The Art World
The main aim of ‘Episode 3 – ‘Enjoy Poverty’ is not criticism of those who work in the development sector but those who take advantage of ‘filmed poverty’. As Martens clearly stated in the Q&A session after the screening, his criticism is not aimed at international institutions, humanitarian agencies or corporations. He sees his work mainly as a reflection on the trend that has developed within the art world.
“I could not make a film on exploitation. I made a film on exploitation within the art world!” he says.
He wants to expose “the relation of power between those who watch and those who are being watched, between those who take photographs/film and those who are being photographed/filmed”. According to Martens, in the last ten years there has been a trend in contemporary art, a kind of “documentary turn” with numerous works of art dealing with social and political issues, dealing with the world but no one had problematised that power relationship.
For him, as with other raw materials such as cocoa, coffee, and diamonds, the poor being filmed and photographed do not gain from the money made from their imagery. If the consumption of cocoa, coffee, etc. today is not neutral, “the consumption of images cannot be neutral and the consumer of art today cannot be a neutral spectator”.
The production of filmed poverty is criticised in numerous ways in the film. On the one hand, no one is more criticised than “the character who travels with his piece of conceptual art to the middle of a village in Africa”.
Some aspects of the production of images from developing countries are questioned in different moments in the film:
The ownership of the images and the copyright – Martens asks an Italian photographer working for a press agency ‘who is the owner of the pictures he takes?’ The Italian photographer answers, “I am the owner”. Martens insists playing dumb – “But don’t you think that the people set up the scene, it is their house, their objects?” The photographer looks at Martens with surprise and answers suspiciously, “Yes, but I am the one who decides when to take the picture, I am the one who decides the moment. That makes the picture mine”.
The value of the pictures – Martens contrasts the earning power of a plantation worker who has a malnourished child against the price that could be earned by a Western photographer picturing him.
The type of images we consume from developing countries and who takes them. Martens, at some point in the film, undertakes another project where, under his guidance, local photographers start photographing malnourished children and women who have been raped instead of wedding parties because “war pays more” – illustrated when Martens creates a table contrasting the price of war pictures and wedding pictures. They plan to sell the pictures taken by the local photographers to foreign media or organizations. In one of the most disturbing scenes of the film, the local photographers visit a hospital with malnourished children. Martens plays the ceremony master and directs the situation telling how and what to photograph, looking always for the most distressing angles. “Did the Western photographers ask the children to take off their shirts?” asks Martens to the doctor. “Yes”, says the doctor. Then Martens ask the local photographers to do the same. Then Martens and the men go to see a Medecins sans Frontiers representatives to find out whether they would be allowed to take pictures in a MSF hospital or whether they would be interested in buying their photos. The answer to both questions is ‘no’. One of the MSF representatives makes a little comment on the quality of the pictures brought to them. The local photographers leave the scene humiliated while Martens coldly tells them that their plan has failed and they are not going to be able to sell their photos.
The consumer of images
Martens’ criticism does not stop at the producers of the images. He wants also to question the consumers. At different moments he performs a reproduction of the Western public’s attitude in front of distressing images – consumed daily in the West via newspapers, TV or NGOs leaflets – of people suffering of hunger, lack of the housing, hospitals etc. He wants to question their lack of action, the lack of real engagement to solve the situation: not one which stops at giving a bit of money to a humanitarian NGO to feel good about ourselves.
Martens then performs the role of a guy who watches suffering but does not do anything. He does not intervene, he just continues filming or adopts an irritating, even cruel, attitude. He watches a child while he dies, he asks with indifference a plantation worker to show to the camera her daughter’s sores due to malnourishment. He asks malnourished children to take their shirts off to get a better picture – a “good picture”.
For Martens the solutions is simple – as he says in other contexts – people in the West should accept to pay the right price for the products produced in countries like Congo.
Ethics of the film
I understand those who had the impression that Martens uses people for his own “artistic” aim, exploits them for his little piece of conceptual art. In some situations he goes to such extremes that, in fact, he seems to go beyond the arguments he criticises.
The style he uses in the film increases the viewers doubt. The ‘documentary-style’ gives a realistic touch throughout the film. In the moments when we are in a Borat-style passage it is easy to see the performed style. In others, like the documentary style passages, it is more difficult to understand whether it is a performance or not. Even if you accept that he is performing – which is not always evident – are the Congolese people performing too? Is the mother crying after the death of her child performing? Are the local photographers when humiliated performing?
Although very difficult to watch at times, I think this film is a very useful tool for education either in art/film/photography studies or in the humanitarian world. It opens a door for reflection on numerous issues and it brings new ways to approach those reflections, some times in very distressing ways.
As a final note, during the Q&A session, it was almost a relief to discover that the real Renzo Martens is nothing like the one we see in the film. The real one not only did not make fun of the local photographers but he has started an artistic project with them. The villagers who worshiped the luminous sign ‘Enjoy, please, poverty’ are receiving money out of the distribution of the film. What I liked most is that he talked about these initiatives very reluctantly. His work was the film, whatever he has done outside the film was a private matter.
Filed under: Art, Film Tagged: | Africa, Central Africa, development
