Renzo Martens Talk and Screenings
All events are FREE
Screening Renzo Martens, Episode III
Monday 9 January 2012 at 6:00 pm
Hart House, South Sitting Room
Screening Renzo Martens, Episode I
Tuesday 10 January 2012 at 6:00 pm
Hart House, East Common Room
Renzo Martens Artist’s Talk
Tuesday 10 January 2012 at 7:00 pm
Hart House, East Common Room
Renzo Martens will be presenting a public talk on January 10th. We have good news for those of you who may have missed Martens’s work in the recent exhibition Models For Taking Part. Before the artist’s talk, there will be two chances to view Martens’s work again. Episode III will be screened on January 9, and Episode I will be screened on January 10.
IMAGE CREDIT: Renzo Martens, Episode III, 2008 (still). Film, 90 min. Courtesy of the artist.
Dutch artist Renzo Martens has become known for producing films which investigate—and at times exploit—guilt through matters of complicity. The films, which aim to move beyond definitions of “good and evil,” incite both vehement detraction and defense. Martens’s series (Episode 1, Episode III,and the pending Episode II) attempts to mediate its medium’s own implication in dominant visual regimes. The artist’s works have recently been shown at Tate Modern (London); Kunsthaus Graz, La Vireina (Barcelona); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); the 6th Berlin Biennale; and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, as part of the exhibition Models For Taking Part (9 September – 11 December 2011), curated by Juan A Gaitán.
Episode III, also known as Enjoy Poverty, follows Renzo Martens's activities in the Congo. The film asserts that images of poverty are the Congo’s most lucrative export, generating more revenue than traditional exports like gold, diamonds, or cocoa. However, just as with these traditional exports, those that provide the raw material—the poor being filmed—hardly benefit from it at all.
Amidst ethnic war and relentless economic exploitation, Martens sets up an emancipation program that aims to teach the poor how to benefit from their biggest resource: poverty.
With a neon sign packed in metal crates and carried through the jungle by Martens's porters, the local population is encouraged to capitalize on what the world has given them as their share. It states “Enjoy Poverty.” Hapless plantation workers question it, accept it, dance around it, yet in the end, the whole project seems bound to fail.
A screening of Martens’s Episode I (2003) will precede the artist’s talk on Tuesday 10 January 2012. Episode I, the first in Martens’s unfinished triptych, is located in war-torn Chechnya. In the film, the artist penetrates the war zone—alone, illegal, and carrying an Hi8 camera—and takes on the role of the single most important actor in war: that of the ubiquitous yet forever-undefined television viewer for whose attention the battles are being fought. Amidst ruins and bombings, he does not ask refugees, UN employees, and rebels how they feel. Those stories are well known, and serve no purpose for those who tell them. Instead, he asks them how they think he feels. The film forms a metaphor for an economy of images, roles, and emotions. At the same time, there Martens stands alone, with his camera, recording. The film is not about some external phenomenon, but about the terms and conditions of its own existence.
Renzo Martens is currently working on Episode II. “The three films together will form a triptych. They will form three discrete sculptures that I envision will be set up like an altarpiece in the gallery space. In keeping with this form, Episode I and Episode III are the side panels, representing earthly narratives. The centrepiece will focus on divine love, just as does the traditional altarpiece. It will represent a conversation between two people the topic of which will be love. As such it will offer a deeper solution to the consciousness of exploitation raised in Episode I and Episode III, a consciousness I do not believe is limited to war and poverty, but is all around us.”
Presented by the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Hal Jackman Foundation.
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Hart House, University of Toronto
7 Hart House Circle
Toronto, ON M5S 3H3
