Analyzing Renzo Martens 'Enjoy Poverty'

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Enjoy III, also known as ‘Enjoy Poverty’, is the 90 minute film of Renzo Martens’ activities in Congo. Armed with a camera, a neon sign, and a compelling premise-that poverty is Africa’s primary resources-the Dutch artist Renzo Martens spent three years traveling throughout the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The film ‘Enjoy Poverty’ is a very complex and a difficult film to watch which focuses on one of their major exports of Congo which is ‘poverty’ according to the artist. This provocative and controversial film raises questions about media coverage of poverty and what the poor get in return. Martens critically investigate how poverty is represented and exploited as an industry. The film gives an overview of the relationship between the viewer and the person being viewed, the relationship of power and dominance. It is a performance in which the artist has symbolically tried to give his audience the taste of reality, through the dual roles he had …show more content…

and yet keeping the lime light on themselves for example as shown in the film, the aid and the camps provided by the western NGOs. The aid given to the third world countries automatically flows back in with interest and also the NGOs, their work; it is just for their own betterment as poverty intrigues sympathy, exposure to media, donations, and charity which brings them more funds and makes them and their logos more prominent in the eyes of the world. Therefore, he tries to highlight the fact that this is just one side of the picture and the reality lies beyond

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