The coronavirus was difficult, but vaccinations are well underway by now and we can soon start travelling again. If you happen to live in the West at least. "The numbers of vaccinations in Africa are lagging a long way behind, it’s a catastrophe waiting to happen", says cultural scientist Tom Sintobin. "We’ll be able to go on our holidays, vaccinated and everything, to areas where they desperately need tourism, but where the people are not protected against the coronavirus."
This illustrates the disparities. Martens puts it even more clearly in his film Enjoy Poverty (2008): poverty is one of Africa's most lucrative export products. Numerous people profit from it; businesses, aid organisations and engaged art galleries. The only people who scarcely profit from it, or not at all, are those in the areas where the poverty exists. In his latest film, White Cube (2020), Martens organises a project in which he encourages local communities in Congo to make chocolate sculptures and sell them in the West. He's a little more optimistic in that film. More people have had their eyes opened to the structural inequality, but it has as yet to lead to economic change.
Unilever
That is due in part to the role of companies such as Unilever. Unilever obtained palm oil from Congo for more than a century. Subsequently, the company facilitates exhibitions that conversely criticise that trade while earning money from those exhibitions. "Businesses allow the criticism which makes them look engaged, but carry on doing what they were doing in the meantime", says anthropologist Anke Tonnaer. "Martens pulls away the curtain. At the same time, he is also a part of the system. Although he has a web store, the proceedings of which go to local Congolese communities, he's also the one who earns from the films and the invitations to speak when the current Creative Culture Talk begins. He incorporates this fact and his struggle with it in his films too."
Martens' films open the discussion on the value of aid projects. Do they really contribute to a reduction in the structural inequality or are they nothing more than a drop in the ocean? And what has to be done to really make a difference?
One of the questions that Martens' work raises is whether it's all right to earn money from aid projects. And if so, how much? Sintobin: "We think it's only right that doctors who are saving lives receive a good salary in exchange, but among aid organisations and artists, that's taboo. Even though you could say that a good salary can provide professionalism, which in turn benefits everyone." Tonnaer adds: "We assume that aid workers do their work based on an intrinsic motivation and therefore don't have to earn much. At the same time, you might ask yourself whether that intrinsic motivation hasn't been pushed to the background in large aid organisations, which operate the same way as any other company."
Momentum
Martens doesn't only scrutinise businesses; he also examines our own consumer behaviour. In one scene, he lets people in Congo taste chocolate. They've never tasted it before, even though the area they live in is used for the production of chocolate on a large scale. Sintobin: "Martens painfully emphasises that “by our consumer behaviour, we are contributing to a process of slow violence”. You don't see any people dying, but the large-scale production of such things as palm oil leaves areas devastated which is an extremely violent result nonetheless."
We're approaching a crossroads according to Tonnaer and Sintobin since more and more people are realising this and becoming increasingly aware of their consumer behaviour. "People are curious to know what alternatives there are. There is now momentum for moving from slow violence to slow solutions.”
Creative Culture Talk
The Creative Culture Talk with Renzo Martens will take place on monday 31 may at 20:00. More information.
Watch Enjoy Poverty on Human Activities (kosten €3,00)
Watch White Cube on Picl (€8,50)
Photo: Marc Wathieu via Flickr.