Monday, March 28, Careof hosts Kunstverein (Milano) – an experimental platform, research and production project for contemporary art – with Episode 1 and Episode 3, two films by Renzo Martens. The screening and the meeting with the artist open the first chapter of The Thinking Eye, a series of films and talks that Kunstverein (Milano) presents in various locations across the city throughout 2011.

The title The Thinking Eye references the television film series created by Juan Downey in the early 1980s: the Chilean artist used video as a means to recover the “self” within Western cultural, political, and economic systems, reflecting on the relativity of perception.

In his work, Renzo Martens examines the role of the camera in conflict zones to generate pseudo-documentaries that raise questions about journalism, the media, but also about imagery and the responsibility of art.

In Episode 1 (2003, 45’) Martens engages in dialogue with the Chechen population in refugee camps and with armed UN soldiers, but instead of documenting the victims, he turns the camera on himself, thus reversing the roles and the observer-observed dynamic. Despite appearances, Episode 1 is not a film about war, but rather about the effects caused by the use of the camera in such contexts. In Episode 3 - Enjoy Poverty (2009, 90’), during a two-year stay in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the artist carries out a project that denounces the exploitation and manipulation suffered by Africa, namely the exportation of the image of poverty and suffering. Martens installs the neon sign “Enjoy Poverty” in a Congolese village and devises an economic compensation system for the “cover children of poverty.”

With the contribution of Fondazione Cariplo, Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lombardia