Renzo Martens
Screening and talk with Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc and Renzo Martens. In his films, Renzo Martens, raises issues regarding image production and the political and social claims of contemporary art. The films prompt the viewer to think about the construction of a documentary, the role of the filmaker in it, and their responsibility as viewers themselves. “For Episode III: Enjoy Poverty”, Martens travelled for two years with his video camera in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an area marked by humanitarian disaster. Martens shows how NGOs and Western media delineate an image of this situation. His film confronts the public with the fact that the Africans themselves do not profit from the images that foreign photographers take of them. So what if, the artist was directly teaching the Africans how to use a camera to benefit also from the image of their own poverty ? “Episode III: Enjoy Poverty” has been recently presented at the Berlin Biennale, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, at the New Museum in New York, at Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London… Renzo Martens was born in 1973 in The Netherlands. He lives and works in Brussels, Amsterdam and Kinshasa. http://entrismearchives.blogspot.com/2010/07/renzo-martens.html http://www.afterall.org/journal/4214/on.the.outsideexteriority.as.condition.for.resistance BETONSALON 9 esplanade Pierre Vidal-Naquet Rez-de-Chaussée de la Halle aux Farines 13ème arrondissement à Paris +33.(0)1.45.84.17.56 info@betonsalon.net