Film still from "CATPC", 2024. Image by Jurgen Lisse
Activity
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
Wednesday, December 4, 2024
The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred with Renzo Martens, CATPC and Hicham Khalidi
Dart Festival 2024
in progress
As part of the DART Festival and in collaboration with MACBA, this event explores the relationship between art and activism through the project presented by artist Renzo Martens and the Congolese artist collective CATPC at the 2024 Venice Biennale. The session includes the screening of three short films by the collective, followed by a discussion with Mbuku Kimpala, Ced’art Tamasala and Matthieu Kasiama (members of CATPC), Renzo Martens, and Hicham Khalidi, moderated by Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director of MACBA.
“The International Celebration of Blasphemy and the Sacred” explores the multiple implications –economic, environmental, ethical, cultural and spiritual – of the activities carried out by the CATPC collective in their effort to reclaim and regenerate land impoverished by monoculture plantations in Lusanga, Democratic Republic of Congo. An effort they have defined with the term “post-plantation”.
The first collaboration between the Lusanga community and Renzo Martens in 2014 laid the ground work for the formation of CATPC, and brought the collective to prominence in the international contemporary art scene. Renzo Martens, known for the confrontation of his practice with the mechanisms of extractive capitalism on the plantations in Congo, has found a promising path in this form of collaboration for the simultaneous development of art and activism. The synergy between the Institute for Human Activities, founded in the Netherlands by Martens, and CATPC has led to the creation and implementation of a new economic model that allows the native communities of Lusanga to recover their land and cultural heritage.
Programme
The Judgment of the White Cube, CATPC, 2024 / 10′ / Original version with Catalan subtitles
For the CATPC collective, white cube museums and galleries embody an ideology of dominance and oppression. In 2017, CATPC erected its own version of the white cube in a homonymous space located in the heart of the Lusanga plantation, thanks to their collaboration with artist Renzo Martens.
CATCP, 2024 / 10′ / Original version with Catalan subtitles
This film explores the ideas that inspire the CATPC collective’s project, whose main vision is to “replant” certain concepts, messages and issues in an expropriated and transformed land.
The Return of Balot, CATPC, 2024 / 14′ / Original version with Catalan subtitles
This short film depicts the symbolic return of the sculpture of Belgian colonial officer Maximilien Balot to Lusanga, where the White Cube transforms into a sanctuary for a figure laden with history. After 50 years, thanks to a long-term loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the artwork returns to its homeland.
*All three films are Spanish premieres.
*All three films are Spanish premieres.
participants
Elvira Dyangani Ose 
Renzo Martens
artists
4 artists
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