KOW presents MARIO PFEIFER and RENZO MARTENS, two artists who intervene into the First World’s construction of a geographical, economic, and cultural periphery.

Renzo Martens wants to by-pass the way art critiques colonial capitalism without ever changing anything on the scene. With plantation laborers he is now building an artists’ colony in the rainforest of the Congo. Martens has transmitted the digital scans of the local’s self-portraits to the Netherlands, where they were casted in the chocolate that originates from the plantations: art exploring economic and symbolic avenues.

Mario Pfeifer’s video installation portrays the last native inhabitants of Tierra de Fuego. In stupendous images, he has created an aesthetic model that runs counter to the conventional templates of anthropological and documentary representation. His videos yield episodic cross-sections of Patagonia’s lifeworlds, accompanied by a techno soundtrack that smoothes their transition into audiovisual immateriality.