Renzo Martens
dal 30/4/2015 al 6/6/2015
Segnalato da
30/4/2015
Renzo Martens
KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin
The matter of critique. The artist and his Institute for Human Activities (IHA) have aimed to deliberately evoke the unwanted properties of gentrification, and to built a site where art can thus fully address them.
Since their foundation of a settlement on a former Unilever plantation in the Democratic Republic of
Congo in 2012, Dutch artist Renzo Martens and his Institute for Human Activities (IHA) have aimed to
deliberately evoke the unwanted properties of gentrification, and to built a site where art can thus fully
address them.
Their project is constructed on the IHA’s observation that artistic engagement hardly ever accumulates
financial and symbolic surplus value in the regions or amongst the people these projects are
supposedly engaged with, but on the contrary does so in the places where such projects are
subsequently presented: Berlin-Mitte, the Giardini in Venice, or the Lower East Side in New York.
The IHA supports the plantation workers’ enrollment in the economy of symbolic values, which is far
more lucrative than their work for the plantation. Within in the Cercle d’art des Travailleurs des
Plantations Congolaises (art circle of Congolese plantation workers), subsistence farmers and
plantation workers have begun producing self portraits, with the purpose of stimulating economic
diversification in the region.
During their stay at the KW RESIDENCY, Martens and the IHA pursue the implementation and
expansion of the settlement in the Congolese rainforest. They investigate the economic, intellectual,
and aesthetic effects of critically engaged art, and suggest strategies for using gentrification to the
benefit of the regions that are the subject of the works themselves. The main question the IHA aims at
answering is: if plantation workers cannot live off plantation labor, might they live off critical artistic
engagement with plantation labor?
Martens sets up a show room and a temporary public office of the IHA at KW Projects and takes
advantage of the institutional resources from his position within it. As a center of activity, it manifests
itself utilizing the public program of KW Institute for Contemporary Art with discussions, business
seminars, and fundraising events. Organizational aspects of creative labor are put on display,
including the meetings between the artist and institutional staff members, administrative work, grant-
writing, presentations, and brainstorming sessions. The office functions as a contact point and an open
platform, which creates a market for the exhibited works, generates visibility and credibility, raises
funds, convinces volunteers, and assembles knowledge – all in the interest of the plantation’s long-
term gentrification.
After several successful past collaborations, Renzo Martens and KW team up again to channel
resources normally available only to contemporary art structures in the Western World to the
Congolese rainforest. KW’s experience with gentrification in Berlin-Mitte is made productive for the
development of the settlement in Congo.
During Martens’ residency, sculptures produced at the former plantation and reproduDutch artist Renzo Martensced in Europe
using Belgian chocolate, as well as multiples will be on display and for sale at KW and at the gallery
KOW in Berlin.
Image: Renzo Martens, CRITICAL CURRICULUM, Institute for Human Activities, 2014
Press Contact:
Henriette Sölter, press@kw-berlin.de, T +49 30 2434 59-42
Opening: : Friday, 1.5.15, 17–21 h
KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Auguststr. 69
10117 Berlin
Opening hours
Wed–Mon 12–19 h, Thur 12–21 h, Tue closed
Extended opening hours during the Gallery Weekend Berlin (2.–3.5.15): 11–19 h