Enjoy Poverty and Poverty Inc.
In Poverty Inc. the dichotomous obligation of need is presented through the description of charities and NGOs as artificial implants. Citizens of wealthy nations, especially America, need an outlet to prove altruism, and the romance of poor countries or orphaned Haitian children is the perfect gift to satisfy this need. Poverty is the transformation of entire communities and nations into the perfect gift to satisfy a foreign need, and poverty and images of poverty become the most valuable component of the economy. I would encourage everyone to watch Renzo Martens’ Episode III: Enjoy Poverty, an art documentary that exhibits the production of poverty in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and a provocative companion film to Poverty Inc. In the midst of political turmoil and resource depletion, Martens establishes an alternative skilling program that aims to teach impoverished people how to reap benefits from their biggest and most plentiful resource: their own poverty. In mimicking the perpetuation of the image of poverty captured by the Western and Northern gaze, Martens subsequently encourages Congolese photographers to abandon commercial events and instead start taking images of war and disaster. At the end of the film, Martens installs a neon sign that says ‘Enjoy Poverty’ and the locals are encouraged to capitalize on what the world has given them as their spoils, which is poverty itself. Martens’ film is not so much a documentary as much as it is a documentation of a very complex performance. The idea of propagating entrepreneurship is shared by both Poverty Inc. and Enjoy Poverty. However, entrepreneurship remains a capitalist process entirely reliant on chance and vulnerable to volatility. While Martens satirizes entrepreneurship, Poverty Inc. suggests it as a model example of a perfect gift.
Contributed by ShannonLin on 23/01/2023
