‘Do you find him attractive?’ This is not your average phrase on a battlefield, but Renzo Martens traveled alone to war-torn Chechnya during Putin's 2000 invasion to ask exactly that. In the video Episode 1, he defies the conventional documentary gaze. Amidst the ruins and disasters, Martens doesn't ask the refugees, UN employees, or rebels how they feel. Instead, he asks them how he, a white male viewer, might feel and how he might find love. The film exposes the asymmetries between viewers and the viewed when consuming war imagery and demonstrates that everyone is part of the war economy. Find it at XPO-7
Renzo is a Dutch artist trained in political science and art whose practice examines the power structures embedded in global economies, media, and cultural institutions. His work interrogates the relationship between art, capitalism, and colonial histories.
