Dart 2024 | Activity | MACBA Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona
Session dedicated to artist Renzo Martens and Congolese artist collective CATPC (Cercle d’Art desTravailleurs de Plantation Congolaise), with a specific focus on their collaboration for the NetherlandsPavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale 2024, curated by Hicham Khalidi. The session includes screenings of three short films made by the collective, followed by a conversation with Renzo Martens, Mbuku Kimpalaand Ced’art Tamasala – both members of CATPC – and Hicham Khalidi. This open discussion will be moderated by MACBA’s director, Elvira Dyangani Ose.
“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 CATPCcollective 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 groundwork for the formation of CATPC, and brought the collective to prominence in the international contemporary arts 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 CubeCATPC, 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 BallotCATPC, 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.
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