Critique in Practice
Renzo Martens' Episode III (Enjoy Poverty)
ed. by Anthony Downey and Els Roelandt ; with contr. by Ana Teixeira Pinto, Xander Karskens, Artur Zmijewski ... [et al.]

---

Author(s)

Ana Teixeira Pinto, Xander Karskens, Artur Zmijewski, ...[et al.]

Editor(s)

Anthony Downey, Els Roelandt

Publication

Berlin ; Ghent ; Eindhoven : Sternberg ; KASK / School of Arts ; Van Abbe Museum, 2020

Scope

360 Pages, illustrated, 21 cm.

ISBN

9783956795053

---

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.This publication, part of a research project inititated by Renzo Martens, brings together essays on Martens’ provocative film ‘Episode III (Enjoy Poverty)’ (2008). Investigating the economic value of one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's most lucrative exports (namely, poverty), Enjoy Poverty remains a landmark intervention into debates about contemporary art's relationship to exploitative economies. 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.

---

Person as subject

Renzo Martens

Keywords

racism , critical aesthetics , decolonisation , neo liberalism , engagement

Geographical location

Congo

Location

Cabinet 5 - 4: Kunstenaars

Extra themes

Black Art and Culture

Remarks

Includes notes, screening list, bibliography, biographies ; temporarily located kast 30 -4 : Tentacular Thinking / Mind Map