A piece of art
Renzo Martens sees his documentary as a piece of art, and prefers for it to be shown in art galleries rather than in cinema’s during various festivals. Just like a painting that Van Gogh painted, the piece of art is never the reality. Rather it is a depiction of a scene that is being displayed on a painting. And because we all know it is a painting it carries a certain meaning within it self. So, the sceneries of Van Gogh are not merely sceneries, but are true art.
In Episode 3, Martens has tried, to capture that notion of how we look at something in the documentary itself. So rather than trying to show reality, Martens paints a picture of how he thinks we look at Africa and what is happening with the aid to Africa. This rather depressing picture of people that are left with no chance doesn’t make you feel good at all. Martens tries to help, but fails miserably. In the end, he leaves the people helplessly alone in their survival and tells them, they will never be able to escape poverty, so they might as well celebrate it instead.
Poverty as a resource
Martens comes up with the argument that a lot of organizations, people and countries are making money of poverty. The yearly income of a country like Congo is dominated by the ‘aid’ given to them. It keeps various NGO’s running and it provides for a job for countless journalists, photographers, and cameramen. So, in his words: poverty is a resource that people make money of, so why shouldn’t the local people make money of that as well.
Like with all natural resources, the locals are unable to make any real money of it. They simply lack the opportunity and network to do so. Strikingly, this is what happens to all natural resources. The people living in these regions, hardly ever benefit from the tremendous wealth that does come from usins these resources. It just gets stuck in the governments or in other Western countries and companies.
I find it a striking argument though. He does pose the right question in my opinion. And I think it fits our perspective on it as well. We advocate the ‘trade not aid‘ slogan widely. In our vision it should be about empowering the local people themselves. And they might have an opportunity to do so, with the current technologies that are introduced there. There still is that danger of the physical infrastructure (or life) not catching up…
Will our vision thus end up with the same depressing end as Martens documentary? The danger is there, what can we do, to write a different ending to our scenario?
