Critique in Practice. Renzo Martens‘ “Episode III: Enjoy Poverty”
- Submitting institution
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Birmingham City University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 32Z_OP_B1001
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Sternberg Press
- ISBN
- 978-3-956795-05-3
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The researcher commissioned and edited twenty-nine original essays, and contributed an extended introductory chapter that provides historical context for the volume’s debates around Dutch artist Renzo Martens and his film <Episode III>. This film investigates the political and economic value of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s humanitarian aid programmes. Martens’s film is a landmark intervention into debates about who benefits from representations of poverty, and the present volume creates a substantive frame of reference for future critical arguments about the cultural representation of poverty.
The researcher’s essay presents new arguments on the ethics of cultural production in relation to images of poverty. In developing these arguments, about so-called ‘ethical criticism’, the researcher employed historical and archival investigations, interviews with the artist, and visual analysis of his practice in order to propose a radical re-reading of what is meant by ‘ethics’ when used in relation to cultural practices.
The researcher managed the editorial team to ensure the quality of contributions, and the inclusion of a wide-range of methodologies, such as humanities and social science-based critical approaches. Using theoretical and methodological frameworks drawn from the fields of decolonization studies, economic theory, and postcolonialism, contributors reconsidered the critical value to be had by exposing contemporary art’s relationship to exploitative economies—a subject central to the field of institutional decolonization and art practices across the Global South.
<Critique in Practice> was supported by the Institute for Human Activities (IHA), KASK/School of Arts (Gent), and the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven). It was the culmination of research that involved original interviews with the artist, conducted by the researcher as part of conference proceedings and one-off events, including the editing and presentation of archival material relating to the original film.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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