Locked in the Frame: The Difficulties of Criticising a Discourse from Within

A Comparison of Joseph Conrad' s Heart of Darkness and Renzo Martens' Film Episode III Enjoy Poverty

Uta Beyer July 2011

Not so very long ago, the earth numbered two thousand million inhabitants: five hundred million men, and one thousand five hundred million natives. The former had the Word; the others had the use of it.
Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth

Table of Contents
1 Introduction___________________________________________________________4 2 A Comparison of the Africa Discourse in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Renzo Martens Film and Interviews on Episode III_________________________________5 3 Conclusions____________________________________________________________9 4 Bibliography__________________________________________________________ 10
4.1 Printed Literature_________________________________________________10 4.2 Online Literature__________________________________________________ 11 4.3 Films____________________________________________________________12

1 Introduction
The European1 Africa discourse has been analyzed critically and in depth 2 mainly since the end of the colonial era, finding that the concept 'Africa' is dominantly a Western construct of representation, where Africa is functionalised as the other world, the antithesis of Europe3 - and photography and the imagery being a part of it. 4 Within this discourse especially the Congo is seen as a microcosmos for Africa in general 5, as a reservoir of atrocities6, and thus a 'labeling reservoir', that serves various functions for the labeling (Western) group.7 This essay aims at comparing the Africa discourse in Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella Heart of Darkness8 and in Renzo Martens' film and the interviews 9 following his 2009 film premiere of Episode III Enjoy Poverty, and asks the following research questions:10 - Which kind of contribution does Marten's film make to the contemporary Western Africa discourse? - In view of the film, what are the prospects of criticising a discourse by means of the same discourse?
European here also refers to 'white', 'Western'. cf. e.g. Pieterse, Jan Nederveen 1992. White on Black. Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Jordan, Winthorp D., 1968. White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro. Williamsburg, VA. Arndt, Susan, 2001. AfrikaBilder. Mnster: Unrast. 3 Achebe 1978: p. 3. It is now widely acknowledged that Africa, as an idea, a concept, has historically served, and continues to serve, as a polemical argument for the Wests desperate desire to assert its difference from the rest of the world (Mbembe 2001: p. 2). 4 In the 1960s/1970s, a critical analyses of the power relations implied in photography, and of the Western visual Africa discourse began, then mostly analysing colonial photography and its functions. Edward W. Said's book Orientalism from 1978 as well as Michel Foucault's work on discourse and power written in the 1960s and 1970s have been ground-breaking in this process. Decades later, primarily since the early years of this millennium, a critical discussion also about the contemporary visual representations of Africa and the possibilities of an alternative visual Africa discourse has emerged. Cf. e.g. the platforms Africa Knows, http://africaknows.com/ and African Lens, http://www.africanlens.com; Mark Sealy's (2007) essay Early Photographic Practice and the Imaging of the Black Subject as Culturally Absent, http://www.marksealy.com/page6.htm; David Campbell's research project Imaging Famine and the Imaging Famine blog, http://www.imaging-famine.org/blog/; D.J. Clark's (2009) thesis Representing the MAJORITY WORLD famine, photojournalism and the Changing Visual Economy. Durham University, http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/136/. 5 Penney 2010. 6 Gettleman 2009. 7 Thus, the 'Congo discourse' rates high in contributing to the Africa discourse, to the Western attributions, stereotypes, imagery, projections regarding Africa, and representations of 'otherness'. In this essay, therefore, Martens' film as well as Conrad's book are discussed under the topic Africa Discourse. 8 As methodical approach I use Chinua Achebe's analysis An Image of Africa (Achebe 1978). The text was also published 1988 as An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness in the German language collection of Chinua Achebe essays with the title Ein Bild von Afrika (Achebe 1988), with some additions to the 1978 text. All quotes in this essay from the 1988 German book are my own translations. 9 Subsequent to the first film screenings, four interviews have been conducted with Renzo Martens; cf. ArtReview 2009; Penney 2010; Guerin 2009; Tomme 2010. 10 This essay thus aims at contributing to the analysis of the contemporary Western representation of Africa and the Africa discourse.
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2 A Comparison of the Africa Discourse in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Renzo Martens Film and Interviews on Episode III
In the centre of Renzo Martens critique is the exploitation of Africa by Western media, Western industries, and Western humanitarian aid projects. The methodology he uses is that it critiques by duplicating what may be bad.... it's the copy in a way of existing power relations11, it replicates colonial practices 12. Also Joseph Conrad saw and condemned the malady of imperial exploitation 13. Like Marlow14, Martens comes through to us as a witness of truth15. In the film I try to be very objective... All in all, the way I am there, it's...it's objective more than anything... I don't think that it is crazy or artistic... I think it is objective... As I say, my role in that film is to be as close to objectivity as one can get. Truth, I just call it objectivity16. It's very hard to be objective, to...to fulfil this role, so, I took a long time to do it, em, until I managed 17. Martens combines his claim to objectivity with his claim to art18: There are many connections to documentary film, but for me, Episode III is art19. Achebe20 analyses the prospects of mediating truth by means of art 21 and defines: Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him; art is the pursuit to produce a second form of being by means of one's imagination22. Fiction (art) though, according to Achebe, is not equally useful or desirable..., there are good-natured and ill-natured ones 23 - with Conrad belonging to the latter. Conrad uses Africa merely as a stage for a white man's play that excludes Africans as (equal) human beings. Africa as setting and backdrop which eliminates the African as human factor. Africa as a metaphysical battlefield devoid of all recognizable humanity, into which the wandering European enters at his peril. Of course, there is a preposterous and perverse kind of arrogance in thus reducing Africa to the role of props for the breakup of one petty European mind. But that is not even the point. The real question is the

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Martens in: Penney 2010. Martens in: Tomme 2010. 13 Achebe 1988: p. 39; my own translation. 14 Marlow is Joseph Conrad's protagonist and narrator in Heart of Darkness. 15 Achebe 1978: p. 7. 16 Martens in: ArtReview 2009a. 17 Martens in: ArtReview 2009b. 18 Thus following a trend in contemporary art, cf. Cramerotti 2009. 19 Guerin 2009. See also Rancire (2004: p. 38): writing history and writing story come under the same regime of truth. 20 In his essay The Truth of Fiction (Achebe 1988: pp. 142-173); my own translations from German. 21 In his essay in particular fiction as a form of art. 22 Achebe 1988: p. 143. 23 Achebe 1988: pp. 151-152. Ill-natured fiction like racial superiority, according to Achebe, declares fiction as facts. Supporters of such fiction resemble lunatics; while a healthy person might from time to time perform a play, the lunatic always lives in it (Achebe 1988: pp. 162-163).
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dehumanization of Africa and Africans which this age-long attitude has fostered and continues to foster in the world.24 Similarly, Martens functionalises the Congo as a stage to make his point. Obviously the film is a construction...i didn't know anybody in the Congo before I went there but I did know I wanted to make this film that reveals it's own function and therefore reveals the power relationships between the ones watching and the ones being watched.25 This is even visually staged, when Martens installs his large neon 'Enjoy please Poverty' sculpture in several Congolese villages. 26 The villagers' role is that of mute and perplexed extras. In another section of the film Martens sets up his 'emancipatory project': And so I looked for the best setting to execute that experiment. It seemed to me that the Congo would be perfect. It has a long and welldocumented history of extraction of natural resources by outsiders paired with the local population's lack of information about the economic value of these natural assets.27 Within this project Martens assumes the role of the omniscient teacher, with Congolese villagers, starving children, his pupils as dummies around him, and thus eliminating all humanity from the people he meets.28 Aline du Rocher analyses: [Martens] makes his point to the viewing audience through humiliation and exploitation. Labelling his work as 'emancipation project' is nothing more than cynicism. He is there to teach the uneducated, to show them how things should be done. The photographers execute his orders and Martens becomes dominant in a master-slave relationship. These two men are instrumentalised by Martens, like any other 'master', has 'acquired them to serve his self-interest'... The way the artist treats a child in a hospital is more than simply offensive but hides the violation of the most basic human rights.29 Similarly Achebe evaluates Conrad's work: I am talking about a story in which the very humanity of black people is called in question 30, or to speak with Conrad: The thought of

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Achebe 1978: p. 9. Martens in: ArtReview 2009a. 26 The sign is in English, and Martens explains to the villagers, that this is the language of the white people that will see his film. 27 Martens in: Tomme 2010. Martens' arrogant assumption about the 'local population' and its level of knowledge is noteworthy. 28 Another noteworthy expression in this context is the following statement of Martens similar to several others in his interviews: I just try to teach them some of the basic laws of capitalism (Martens in: Tomme 2010). 29 Rocher 2009. 30 Achebe 1978: p. 11.
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their humanity like yours...Ugly31. Achebe's main analysis is about the way Conrad uses language and he concludes that Conrad was a bloody racist.... That this simple truth is glossed over is because white racism against Africa is such a normal way of thinking that its manifestations go completely undetected 32. Likewise, Martens in several interview passages reveals being rooted in an ethnocentric and stereotypical traditional Western Africa discourse - an issue not addressed in any of the interviews.33 Marlow and Martens are both travellers in a country they regard merely as stage for their performance, and are not able to cast off their spectacles of prejudice and stereotypes that they have arrived with. As a result, what they bring back from the Congo is a narrative about themselves. And that is how the film was conceptualised: When you are aware of yourself, you only have to study yourself, and you see why all these other things are going wrong, too... The problem is that all of these people take their own privileges too seriously. They attach to them. And I guess many of us do, and as you see in the film, I do too.34 Conrad's picture of these peoples of the Congo seems grossly inadequate... Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves35. The interviews with Martens are mainly an account of his experiences with and feelings about not at all new phenomena he has observed in the Congo: exploitation, and the downsides of humanitarian aid and journalism. Often in the interviews, Martens seems to reflect what he has observed for the first time, and struggles for words and meaningful answers. In the guise of the melancholy artist in love with his impotent quest for redemption, RM is himself. 'It was cold, and it rained, and I felt like an actor'. 36 Stabler illustrates Martens' Nothingness endlessly striving to become Everything 37 by means of an experience he had with a group of people, which was super-creepy and not understandable for him: But my experience in itself is misremembered and described falsely. It offers nothing, except the hopelessness of trying to make it meaningful 38. Dan Fox concludes: Martens

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Cited in Achebe 1978: p. 8. Achebe 1988: p. 25; my own translation from the German 1988 publication, as the original 1978 speech had printing errors. 33 Many examples could be given, and Martens Africa discourse needs to be analysed more thoroughly than it can be done here; as an example, in one interview Martens states: Since I can't film many of the, let's say, white people in Africa committing all kinds of...doing all kinds of things, the only people that we see in our news media doing things in Africa...white people...are the ones helping and aiding Africa, obviously we're involved in many other things as well, but it's pretty much impossible to film those, because they would just not give you a guided tour of their diamond smuggling or whatever....I can take over all these roles. (Martens in: ArtReview 2009a.) 34 Penney 2010. 35 Achebe 1978: p. 12. Achebe gives the example of Marco Polo, who, in his memoires 'Description of the World', written after 20 year that he had spent in China, forgot to mention the Chinese art of printing, as well as the Chinese wall. 36 Veire 2008. 37 Stabler 2008. 38 Ibid.
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is too caught up playing the self-obsessed artist to really dig deep, which results in very little actually being revealed39. Caught within himself and at the same time having to try to make it meaningful seems to be one of the dilemmas Martens finds himself in. He had received the grants for the film, had chosen the Congo as the film's stage, had constructed his neon 'Enjoy please Poverty' sign (which he had brought all the way from Brussels), and had his concept in mind of what he wanted the film to be about regardless of what he would actually find in situ. It all started with the idea that I had to make a film that would reveal the power differential between those who are watching it and the individuals who are depicted in it 40. Alas, and probably unknown to Martens until confronted with it in the interviews, there is also the power differential between the filmmaker and the individuals depicted in the film.41 When confronted with the reproach that Martens is actually the producer of suffering for the sake of his film, he remains unimpressed; in these interview passages he expresses his most cynical view of what he has created: Yes it is painful for them, it was painful for me, and now I hope that it is painful for you 42. Moreover: The pain is here, rather than there. These people have that all the time 43. In the context of this apathetic empathy Achebe reminds us of Marie Antoinette, who, upon learning that the peasants had no bread, answered, Let them eat cake 44. It seems the artist has an almost pathological commitment to the artwork, to the degree that he will ruin lives and court disappointment to elucidate a cynical logic of engagement and make a point about the impotence of engagement45. Millar asks: Does Martens add to the sum of human suffering that he encounters?46. The answer resulting from this and related analyses is: yes. Martens has represented himself in his work as an artist who does not mind breaching basic human rights in order to make his point but after hearing him speak, the audience is left suspecting that this is just public persona... Viewing Episode III-Please Enjoy Poverty on its own is shocking but with the artist talking about it, it makes it unethical.47 Why has Martens agreed to the interviews? It is apparent, that he talks about his work in good faith, he does not doubt that he is right. For him the end a piece of art against exploitation justifies all means, and he seems fully unaware, that it is a piece of art by means of (racist) exploitation. Also in this regard Martens fully stands in the tradition of Conrad: Conrad did see and condemn the malady of imperial exploitation, but was oddly
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Fox 2009. Martens in: Tomme 2010. Unfortunately it is not clear from the interview transcript whether Martens said ...the idea that I had, to make a film... or ...the idea that I had to make a film.... 41 It is noteworthy that only one interview (ArtReview) touches the subject of suffering created by Martens himself. 42 Martens in: ArtReview 2009a. 43 Martens in: ArtReview 2009b. This interview with Martens was conducted in London, so with 'here' Martens means the Western world, and 'there' is the Congo or the whole of Africa. 44 Achebe 1988: p. 165. 45 Millar 2009. 46 Millar 2009. 47 Rocher 2009.
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blind regarding his own racism 48. It can be assumed, that racism and racist actions can take place independent of and against the agent's own will. One of the core problems of the film is Martens' methodology of 'othering' that he chose, consciously or not, to talk about rather than with the people around him. Susan Sontag writes: ...for the 'Other', even when not an enemy, is regarded only as one to be seen, not someone (like us) who sees 49. Likewise, Achebe finds that: The Whites do all the talking, and the Blacks always listen 50. In addition, Martens' 'othering' process works by means of displaying, exhibiting the other, the African, 'them'. This journalistic custom inherits the centuries-old practice of exhibiting exotic that is colonized human beings: Africans...were displayed like zoo animals in ethnological exhibitions 51. Ultimately, Achebe tends to hope rather than fear. His hope is that the white man is so curious about the black man, that one day he actually pauses and listens to him 52. Achebe reminds us of the well known anecdote, when Wole Soyinka was asked about his opinion about the 'negritude' movement answered that the tiger also doesn't speak about his 'tigritude' movement, and Leopold Senghor replied: But a tiger doesn't speak! 53 In this regard one can only shout to Martens: The Negro speaks!54.

3 Conclusions
Renzo Martens and thus Episode III are not able to transgress the narrow boundaries of the established Western representation of Africa. The image of Africa that Martens (re-)produces, and the methodological elements he applies, follow racist patterns of the representation of Africa used since Joseph Conrad's times. This is Martens contribution to the Africa discourse: Under the pretext of truth, reality, objectivity, and art, the stereotypical image of Africa is consolidated, the exotic African 'other' reproduced once again, whites talk, blacks listen, and the white man maintains his power over the discourse. Martens has made himself guilty of producing suffering in order to make his film. He exploits to show that exploitation is wrong, and one is reminded of Amnesty International's campaign: Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong? Not being guilty of the circumstances Martens observes in the Congo, does not make him guiltless of violating human rights himself. Good intentions are not a sufficient prerequisite for any kind of work, and the photographers intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it 55. Martens' revealing interviews only reinforce
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Achebe 1988: p. 40. Sontag 2003: p. 73. 50 Achebe 1988: p. 179. 51 Sontag 2003: p. 72. 52 Achebe 1988: p. 180. 53 Achebe 1988: p. 183. 54 Achebe 1988: p. 184. 55 Sontag 2003: p. 39.
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the unsettling feeling when seeing the film 56, and the suspicion, that Martens unfortunately was unable to leave the 19th Century Conradian representation of Africa, which made him choose an unethical methodology for his film. Including Congolese as equal partners in all decision making processes of the film production would probably have been the only solution to the dilemma (if not making the film at all was not an option57). Martens cannot hope, that his method of criticizing the discourse by means of the same discourse will be successful, as his film's viewers stem from exactly the same discourse. Discourses are tenacious, because they are fed, to a large extend, by the cultural subconscious. Eva Hoevenaar in her Study Into The Effects Of Using A System To Comment on Itself, in which she examines Martens' film, summarizes: Identifying with systems as a strategy for opening them up, exposing them as flawed or gaining new perspectives on them seems like a strategy ideally cut out for contemporary art 58 a rather desperate conclusion in view of Martens' film. The above comparison with Conrad's more than 100 year-old text, considering its success till present day despite its obvious racist connotations, sheds a less optimistic light on the effects and prospects of Martens' film. From Foucault's, Said's, and Bourdieu's discourse analysis contributions to disillusioned and disillusioning anthropological field reports 59, the difficulties of documenting and reporting on 'the other' have been analysed widely over the past few decades and an easy bypass to the established discourse, or any easy challenging of it, is likely to be impossible. Racism and racist discourses are not only right-wing extremism, violence, prejudice. Racism is expressed in practices of daily life like making art, a film, or an art film.

4 Bibliography
4.1 Printed Literature
Achebe, Chinua, 1988. Ein Bild von Afrika. Berlin: Alexander Verlag. Cramerotti, Alfredo, 2009. Aesthetic Journalism. Bristol: Intellect Ltd. Mbembe, Achille, 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ranciere, Jacques and Zizek, Slavoj, 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics. New York: Continuum. Sontag, Susan, 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador.

J.J. Charlesworth in: ArtReview 2009a. Which, according to Zizek, is often the best solution: The only thing to do is precisely nothing, we should just sit and wait, and in the meantime learn, learn, learn. Cf. Zizek, Slavoj, 2008. Violence. New York: Picador. 58 Hoevenaar, n.d.. 59 Cf. e.g. Barley, Nigel, 1986. The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut. New York: Viking Penguin.
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4.2 Online Literature

Achebe, Chinua, 1978. An Image of Africa. Research in African Literatures, Vol. 9, No. 1, Special Issue on Literary Criticism, pp. 1 15. Viewed 22 April 2011. Available at: http://images.pcmac.org/SiSFiles/Schools/AL/HartselleCity/HartselleHigh/Uploads/Forms/ Achebe_An_Image_of_Africa.pdf. Bouwhuis, Jelle, 2008. Renzo Martens Episode III. Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, SMBA Newsletter No. 107. Viewed 11 April 2011. Available at: http://www.smba.nl/static/en/exhibitions/renzo-martens-episode-iii/107-nieuwsbrief-web1-.pdf. Clark, David, James, 2009. Representing the MAJORITY WORLD famine, photojournalism and the Changing Visual Economy. Doctoral thesis, Durham University. Viewed 18 March 2011. Available at: Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/136/. Fox, Dan, 2009. Renzo Martens. Frieze Magazine, Issue 122, April 2009. Viewed 11 April 2011. Available at: http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/renzo_martens/. Gettleman, Jeffrey, 2009. Symbol of Unhealed Congo Male Rape Victims. The New York Times. 4 Aug 2009. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/world/africa/05congo.html?_r=1. Griffin, Jonathan, 2010. Atrocity Exhibition. Tank Magazine. Viewed 8 April 2011. Available at: http://www.tankmagazine.com/magazine/magazine-feature/atrocity-exhibition-720. Guerin, Frances, 2009. Interview with Renzo Martens. Artslant. Viewed 11 April 2011. Available at: http://www.artslant.com/ny/articles/show/4443. Hoevenaar, Eva, n.d.. A Study Into The Effects Of Using A System To Comment On Itself. Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Viewed 11 April 2011. Available at: http://www.gerritrietveldacademie.nl/project/a-study-into-the-effects-of-using-a-system-tocomment-on-itself. Millar, John Douglas, 2009. The Atrocity Exhibition. Viewed 11 April 2011. Available at: http://www.metamute.org/en/content/the_atrocity_exhibition. Penney, Joe, 2010. The Politics of Helping Others - Interview with Renzo Martens. Viewed 11 April 2011. Available at: http://www.joepenney.com/index.php?/project/interview-withrenzo-martens/. Rocher, Aline du, 2009. Review of Episode III Please Enjoy Poverty by Renzo Martens. 2009. Viewed 10 April 2011. Available at: http://www.slideshare.net/guest58df7f/review-of-episode-iii-please-enjoy-poverty-byrenzo-martens. Roelandt, Els, 2008. Episode 3. Analysis of a Film Process in Three Conversations. A Prior No. 16. Viewed 11 April 2011. Available at: http://www.aprior.org/articles/34. Seijdel, Jorinde, 2008: NJOY POV RTY. Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, SMBA Newsletter No. 107. Viewed 11 April 2011. http://www.smba.nl/static/en/exhibitions/renzomartens-episode-iii/107-nieuwsbrief-web-1-.pdf.

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Stabler, Bert, 2008. Renzo Martens and the Circus of Suffering. Proximity Magazine, 12/09/08, issue 2. Viewed 10 April 2011. Available at: http://proximitymagazine.com/2008/12/circus-of-suffering/. Tomme, Niels Van, 2010. Enjoy Poverty: Disclosing the Political Impasse of Contemporary Art. Renzo Martens in conversation with Niels Van Tomme. Art Papers. Viewed 11 April 2011. Available at: http://www.artpapers.org/feature_articles/feature1_2010_0910.htm. Veire, Frank Vande, 2008: Une bonne nouvelle - Notes on Episode III. Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, SMBA Newsletter No. 107. Viewed 11 April 2001. Available at: http://www.smba.nl/static/en/exhibitions/renzo-martens-episode-iii/107-nieuwsbrief-web1-.pdf.

4.3 Films
Episode III Enjoy Poverty. 2009. Directed by Renzo Martens. Netherlands. Renzo Martens in discussion with J.J. Charlesworth. 2009. ArtReview, Part I. Uploaded by artreview.com on March 31, 2009. Viewed 10 March 2011. Available at: http://www.artreview.com/video/renzo-martens-in-discussion-1; [cited as ArtReview 2009a]. Renzo Martens in discussion with J.J. Charlesworth. 2009. ArtReview, Part II. Uploaded by artreview.com on March 31, 2009. Viewed 10 March 2011. Available at: http://www.artreview.com/video/renzo-martens-in-discussion; [cited as ArtReview 2009b].

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