Episode 3: 'Enjoy Poverty'

Episode III, also known as ‘Enjoy Poverty’, is the 90 minute film registration of Renzo Martens’ activities in the Congo. In an epic journey, the film establishes that images of poverty are the Congo’s most lucrative export, generating more money 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. Thus, Congolese photographers are encouraged to move on from development-hindering activities, such as photographing weddings and parties, and to start taking images of war and disaster. With a neon sign, carried through the jungle by Martens’ porters, hapless plantation workers are encouraged to capitalize on what the world has given them as their share. He mounts a neon sign in the middle of the forest that reads ‘Enjoy Poverty.’ The local population dances frenetically around it, but in the end, adversity won’t be held at bay for long.

Episode III is the third episode in a series of films that investigate the role of the camera in a filmed world. The first of this series was ‘Episode I’ set in Chechnya. By enacting its own parameters, these films try to make visible a world obscured by depictions of it.

‘Episode III’ was first shown at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, in a show that also included one of the metal trunk previously carried throughout the jungle, containing a master-tape, some neon light, a photograph made in collaboration with the local photographers, and a certificate. Simultaneously, the piece served and as the opening film of IDFA, the Amsterdam International Documentary Festival’s 2008 edition. Ever since, viewing copies have been made available for the documentary film circuit and for television screenings, allowing the piece to relate fully to the modes of representation it reproduces. —http://www.rmma.nl