Human beings need to trust in reality, to hold on to it, even if we are aware that we live in non-reality. In other words, what the media calls reality is nothing more than a construction. Two recent exhibitions, the Berlin Biennial and Antifotoperiodismo, at the Virreina Centro de la Imagen, in Barcelona, address the issue of reality, although with an emphasis on different aspects.
Was draußen wartet (What is waiting out there) is the title chosen by Kathrin Rhomberg, curator of the Berlin Biennial. Her approach is based on the idea that we live in non-reality, we know the public lies (which range from weapons of mass destruction to the economic crisis) but at the same time we need to have “real” references. The works she has selected move in two directions: those intended to show the mechanisms of construction of reality, on the one hand, and those that explore an everyday reality that passes through personal experience. Among the first, Renzo Martens’ video Episode 3 (2008) stands out, a 90-minute film set in the Congo. Starting from seemingly innocent questions (why do all the bags that UNICEF provides to refugees and that they use to cover the roofs of their houses have a logo? or does the plane that comes to collect gold and mineral samples bring medicine on the outbound journey?) a “reality” is revealed in which UN troops protect the companies that extract the gold and when they finish their work and move on, the troops do so as well and, consequently, the NGOs must do so. But Martens does not fall into Manichaeism. The reality is much more complex. He does not allow the viewer to stop thinking and feel “touched” by the photographs of starving children, but rather makes explicit the codes of construction of images of poverty. The entire film revolves around one idea: the exploitation of poverty by agencies and NGOs, among others. In scenes that cannot leave us indifferent, Martens tries to convince the photographers of a local photography studio that if they convert their business and instead of parties and celebrations they record everything negative (misery, death and violence), they can earn a little money. And he accompanies them and instructs them in the way they should portray starving naked children, emphasizing their malnutrition, just as agency photographers do. Of course, nobody buys the work of local photographers. Nothing changes and Martens’ film (like the photographs of poverty) are not for “them”, for the inhabitants of the Third World, but for us, for the consumers of the First World.
This film is also present in Antifotoperiodismo, the exhibition curated by Carles Guerra and Thomas Keenan that analyzes the crisis of traditional photojournalism and the opening to less hegemonic positions and more critical views. Exhibitions like these and works like Martens’ reconcile us with the idea that through art it is still possible to change the perception of some things.
[Article published in Bonart, 2010]
