video performances of teenagers singing the pop hit Gotta Go My Own Way alone in their bedrooms. The performers stage themselves amid their toys, posters, and pictures – in the small private spaces they have decorated themselves, while projecting varied degrees of intensity, emotion, and identification. These are their most private spaces, yet computers and cameras simultaneously situate them in the most public forum imaginable: the Internet. Their audience could be anywhere in the world, at any point in the future, and under any circumstances (though being watched in an art gallery may not have crossed their imaginations at the time). Ironically, the uniformity of expression in these clips stands out in stark contrast to the song about striking out on one’s own, actualizing individuality, and “going their own way.” These clips are suffused with a deeply human quality, and give voice to our ability to identify with another’s personal expression. These teenagers are living out personal fantasies that are shared by thousands. There is no mockery here, only pure revelry and a raw desire to display oneself to an other. The online “audience” in this case is not composed of passive spectators. Rather, it consists of both a projected viewer and an active global community of people producing culture, candidly sharing in what connects us to one another in our brave new world of anonymous public selves.

On Saturday February 2nd at 12:00 pm, The Israeli Center for Digital Art will hold a one- time screening of the work Episode 3 by Renzo Marten (2009, 90 min.). The screening will be followed by a discussion with Martens, Moderated by Yehoshua Simon. The event is free of charge, please register in advanced.

Renzo Martens was born in 1973 in the Netherlands. He is a leading video artist, whose works are shown all over the world. He lives and works in Amsterdam, Brussels and Congo. Yehoshua Simon is an Israeli artist, curator and editor.

Martens has spent the past several years examining the role of the camera in places of severe political unrest, utilizing performance and satire to create metafilms that raise questions about the use of journalism and documentation. His film Episode 1 (2003), is presented in the exhibition "Into the Eye of the Storm".

For Episode 3, part of which was shown at Manifesta 7, Martens went to Congo, where he launched a two-year project that examined the exploitation of one of Africa’s major exports: images of poverty and suffering. In a characteristic mix of journalism and irony, Martens erects a blue neon billboard in one of the villages that reads ENJOY POVERTY (in English for the roaming photojournalists who might pass by) while also attempting to launch a program that would allow the continent’s poor to receive restitution for being the poster children for global poverty.