Essays on the provocative 2008 film by Renzo Martens, Episode III
(Enjoy Poverty).
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. Throughout Critique in Practice, contributors
explore the work'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 within Western mainstream media and throughout 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, Human Activities.
Contributors
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, Eva Barois De Caevel, Pieter Van Bogaert, Jelle
Bouwhuis, JJ 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, Paul O'Kane, Laurens Otto, Nikolaus Perneczky,
Kolja Reichert, Els Roelandt, Ruben De Roo, ka˛rî'ka˛chä seid'ou,
Gregory Sholette, Sanne Sinnige, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Emilia Terracciano,
Nato Thompson, Niels Van Tomme, Frank Vande Veire, Eyal Weizman, Vivian
Ziherl, and Artur Z˙mijewski.
