http://www.humanactivities.org/institute
René Ngongo and Renzo Martens in Conversation with Richard Florida. Institute for Human Activities, 2012
As quoted on the page ‘In 2012, the Institute for Human Activities (IHA), a foundation established in the Netherlands, Belgium and the Democratic Republic of Congo, began ‘A Gentrification Program’ on a former Unilever plantation, 800 kilometers from Kinshasa, on a tributary of the Congo River.’
This is a very interesting continuation to the research i had been doing on artist Renzo Martens. Martens is trying to take the ‘poverty trade’ back from western countries to the indigenous people of the DRC, he mentions someone filming how poor people are in the Congo and showing the video in London or New York therefore the money created from such a video was not being used in Congo.
The coco workers within the Congo make very little money from their traditional jobs in the coo industry but with help from funds from Unilever they have made sculptures turned to casts used by a pastry company to sell chocolates at the Artes Mundi, the money all being sent back to the workers.
Daniel Berry Art 