William Kentridge
03 Feb - 15 Apr 2007
WILLIAM KENTRIDGE
3 February – 15 April 2007
Curator: Fredrik Liew
William Kentridge (b. 1955 in South Africa) has for a long time received wide international critical acclaim for his playfully poetic and at the same time melancholically serious drawings, animations and theatre productions. Moderna Museet now presents two of his most recent and to date largest projects, 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès & Journey to the Moon (2003) and Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005).
7 Fragments
7 Fragments for Georges Méliès & Journey to the Moon was produced in 2003 by BAC (Baltic Art Center) in Visby and is in the Moderna Museet collection. The work consists of nine projections in which Kentridge combines performance, animation and film.
The title of the piece alludes to the visionary French film pioneer Georges Méliès and his best known film from 1902 about a journey to the moon. Méliès lived a life characterised by illusions and magic. At the age of 27, he bought the magician Robert Houdini’s theatre in Paris, and at a time when film was a brand new genre, he showed moving images as a part of his shows. In 1896, he began to make his own films and although he managed the production more or less on his own with small means in his studio, he created, for that time, breathtaking special effects at ferocious speed. In 1897 he produced 78 films! Bordering on theatre, Méliès’ film-making is reminiscent of Kentridge’s way of moving freely between drawing and camera, rather like a performance artist, while working on his animations. The nine projections can be seen as an homage to Méliès, as well as a self-reflexive piece.
The projections in 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès show Kentridge himself, wandering about in his studio – sometimes happily, sometimes in anguish, waiting for something to happen or be released. In several of the fragments, the work is about to fall apart, but is nevertheless embraced as part of the finished piece. Kentridge consistently uses whatever is at hand and the films are partly characterised by a silent film-like humour. He even directs ants in his studio. Everything seems possible, which is exemplified in a reverse sequence in which the artist’s tools empty a paper of ink, filling them with new potential before the white sheet. In Journey to the Moon, the longer film and Kentridge’s version of Méliès’ film of the same name, he brings the fragments together. The reverse sequences symbolise weightlessness: a sheet becomes a window of a space ship (with the studio constituting its interior), the ants ”draw” the starry sky as they crawl along a trail of sugar solution, and one of the wrecked drawings forms the basis for the lunar landscape.
This manner of relating to his own creating is a central part of Kentridge’s oeuvre. Already in the special animation technique he developed in Drawings for Projection, he openly accounted for his own process. The idea behind filming the drawings step by step was originally not even meant to be an art work, but was born out of an ambition to document the artistic process and the various stages of the work. Kentridge has often mentioned that a drawing may begin well but after a while it loses focus, becomes lame, overworked or cautious. Taking pictures of the drawings during the working process was a simple way of following the work in the studio, in order to retain the first impulse and prevent successful and interesting features from disappearing into smoke, or into the waste paper basket.
But taking an interest in one’s own creative process is also a basic human and existential trait. By extension, Kentridge’s relationship to his own images raises general questions about creating and processes. The fact that everything is constantly being transformed and renegotiated in the drawings reminds us that possibilities exist. But if one has the possibility to create whatever one wants, how does one make a choice? The erasing and the transforming in his animations may be seen as a way of avoiding making a choice, allowing thoughts to travel in several directions at the same time. But here, too, there is another side to it – everything is transient, evasive and uncertain.
Black Box/Chambre Noire
Black Box/Chambre Noire was commissioned by Deutsche Guggenheim in 2005, but was mainly produced in a neighbouring building to Moderna Museet – the former torpedo factory on Skeppsholmen (now Moderna Dansteatern).
The piece comprises a mechanised theatre with two projections, six figures and some 50 drawings. The duration of the show is 23 minutes, followed by a period of twelve minutes in which the space is illuminated, giving the audience the chance to see the rest of the components of the installation. This allows us to work through the show and re- experience the drawings that were used for the animations. We get closer, and can read and examine the details. As with the constant metamorphoses in his animations, it is a device for Kentridge to incorporate the production process in the work and to openly account for his method of working. It begins to dawn on us that the depiction also points to how we as receivers create meaning of what we see. To experience and understand the world is also a long and painful process where nothing is static. In addition to the fact that the title alludes to the black room of a theatre or a cinema and the black box of an aeroplane, it also refers to the inside of a camera, the apparatus that translates reality to image and thus creates history. Out of the thousands of potential images that flow through this apparatus one is chosen and fixed – a somewhat arbitrary truth.
The show itself begins with a megaphone stepping onto the stage like a presenter, announcing a “Trauerarbeit” [an act of mourning]. This was a term that Sigmund Freud invented to describe an essential and never-ending process undertaken to avoid the denial of, say, a great loss. The most important point of departure of the work, the catastrophe and that which is alluded to in the act of mourning, is the forgotten massacre of the Herero people in German South-West Africa (present day Namibia) in 1904-1907. In 1885, South-West Africa became a German protectorate, after which settlers began to encroach upon and exploit the land of the African indigenous people. Out of frustration, the Herero people revolted in 1904 against the colonisers who hit back against the uprising with disproportionate force. Despite protests, the brutality did not cease until 1905, by which time 75% of the Herero people had been annihilated. This atrocity is often referred to as the first genocide of the previous century.
However, the show is not a linear narrative but rather conveys itself through our senses. It is at times beautiful, violent, horrible and sad. Just as in 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès, Kentridge refers to other artists and thinkers in the formation of the piece. During the preparations for the production of Black Box/Chambre Noire, he worked on a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791), a work that in many respects touches upon the same colonial questions that Kentridge reflects on. In Mozart’s opera, Sarastro (the reasonable sovereign who symbolises light and rules with wisdom) kidnaps the Queen of the Night’s daughter, with the intention of liberating her from irrationality and ignorance, in the same way as Europe occupied Africa with the excuse of enlightening “the dark continent”. Kentridge also refers to Plato’s metaphors of light and shadow; notably the cave parable from the dialogue The Republic (374 B.C.) where it is suggested that we have a moral responsibility to liberate the prisoners of ignorance and drive them out into the light towards the true knowledge of the world.
The design of the miniature theatre hence originates from the model that Kentridge worked on for the production of The Magic Flute and large parts of Philip Miller’s soundtrack is referring back to the music from the opera. The projection above our heads and the light that creates the moving images remind us of Plato’s description of the light that streams into the cave. But where both Mozart’s and Plato’s positive attitude towards the enlightenment as a project characterises their work, one could say that Kentridge’s work examines and reflects its flipside: the shadows cast over the world by the light of knowledge. The truth Plato wrote about, does it even exist? What has history taught us? Despite taking its point of departure in central questions from the colonial history, Black Box/Chambre Noire raises essential questions in the world right now.
3 February – 15 April 2007
Curator: Fredrik Liew
William Kentridge (b. 1955 in South Africa) has for a long time received wide international critical acclaim for his playfully poetic and at the same time melancholically serious drawings, animations and theatre productions. Moderna Museet now presents two of his most recent and to date largest projects, 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès & Journey to the Moon (2003) and Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005).
7 Fragments
7 Fragments for Georges Méliès & Journey to the Moon was produced in 2003 by BAC (Baltic Art Center) in Visby and is in the Moderna Museet collection. The work consists of nine projections in which Kentridge combines performance, animation and film.
The title of the piece alludes to the visionary French film pioneer Georges Méliès and his best known film from 1902 about a journey to the moon. Méliès lived a life characterised by illusions and magic. At the age of 27, he bought the magician Robert Houdini’s theatre in Paris, and at a time when film was a brand new genre, he showed moving images as a part of his shows. In 1896, he began to make his own films and although he managed the production more or less on his own with small means in his studio, he created, for that time, breathtaking special effects at ferocious speed. In 1897 he produced 78 films! Bordering on theatre, Méliès’ film-making is reminiscent of Kentridge’s way of moving freely between drawing and camera, rather like a performance artist, while working on his animations. The nine projections can be seen as an homage to Méliès, as well as a self-reflexive piece.
The projections in 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès show Kentridge himself, wandering about in his studio – sometimes happily, sometimes in anguish, waiting for something to happen or be released. In several of the fragments, the work is about to fall apart, but is nevertheless embraced as part of the finished piece. Kentridge consistently uses whatever is at hand and the films are partly characterised by a silent film-like humour. He even directs ants in his studio. Everything seems possible, which is exemplified in a reverse sequence in which the artist’s tools empty a paper of ink, filling them with new potential before the white sheet. In Journey to the Moon, the longer film and Kentridge’s version of Méliès’ film of the same name, he brings the fragments together. The reverse sequences symbolise weightlessness: a sheet becomes a window of a space ship (with the studio constituting its interior), the ants ”draw” the starry sky as they crawl along a trail of sugar solution, and one of the wrecked drawings forms the basis for the lunar landscape.
This manner of relating to his own creating is a central part of Kentridge’s oeuvre. Already in the special animation technique he developed in Drawings for Projection, he openly accounted for his own process. The idea behind filming the drawings step by step was originally not even meant to be an art work, but was born out of an ambition to document the artistic process and the various stages of the work. Kentridge has often mentioned that a drawing may begin well but after a while it loses focus, becomes lame, overworked or cautious. Taking pictures of the drawings during the working process was a simple way of following the work in the studio, in order to retain the first impulse and prevent successful and interesting features from disappearing into smoke, or into the waste paper basket.
But taking an interest in one’s own creative process is also a basic human and existential trait. By extension, Kentridge’s relationship to his own images raises general questions about creating and processes. The fact that everything is constantly being transformed and renegotiated in the drawings reminds us that possibilities exist. But if one has the possibility to create whatever one wants, how does one make a choice? The erasing and the transforming in his animations may be seen as a way of avoiding making a choice, allowing thoughts to travel in several directions at the same time. But here, too, there is another side to it – everything is transient, evasive and uncertain.
Black Box/Chambre Noire
Black Box/Chambre Noire was commissioned by Deutsche Guggenheim in 2005, but was mainly produced in a neighbouring building to Moderna Museet – the former torpedo factory on Skeppsholmen (now Moderna Dansteatern).
The piece comprises a mechanised theatre with two projections, six figures and some 50 drawings. The duration of the show is 23 minutes, followed by a period of twelve minutes in which the space is illuminated, giving the audience the chance to see the rest of the components of the installation. This allows us to work through the show and re- experience the drawings that were used for the animations. We get closer, and can read and examine the details. As with the constant metamorphoses in his animations, it is a device for Kentridge to incorporate the production process in the work and to openly account for his method of working. It begins to dawn on us that the depiction also points to how we as receivers create meaning of what we see. To experience and understand the world is also a long and painful process where nothing is static. In addition to the fact that the title alludes to the black room of a theatre or a cinema and the black box of an aeroplane, it also refers to the inside of a camera, the apparatus that translates reality to image and thus creates history. Out of the thousands of potential images that flow through this apparatus one is chosen and fixed – a somewhat arbitrary truth.
The show itself begins with a megaphone stepping onto the stage like a presenter, announcing a “Trauerarbeit” [an act of mourning]. This was a term that Sigmund Freud invented to describe an essential and never-ending process undertaken to avoid the denial of, say, a great loss. The most important point of departure of the work, the catastrophe and that which is alluded to in the act of mourning, is the forgotten massacre of the Herero people in German South-West Africa (present day Namibia) in 1904-1907. In 1885, South-West Africa became a German protectorate, after which settlers began to encroach upon and exploit the land of the African indigenous people. Out of frustration, the Herero people revolted in 1904 against the colonisers who hit back against the uprising with disproportionate force. Despite protests, the brutality did not cease until 1905, by which time 75% of the Herero people had been annihilated. This atrocity is often referred to as the first genocide of the previous century.
However, the show is not a linear narrative but rather conveys itself through our senses. It is at times beautiful, violent, horrible and sad. Just as in 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès, Kentridge refers to other artists and thinkers in the formation of the piece. During the preparations for the production of Black Box/Chambre Noire, he worked on a production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791), a work that in many respects touches upon the same colonial questions that Kentridge reflects on. In Mozart’s opera, Sarastro (the reasonable sovereign who symbolises light and rules with wisdom) kidnaps the Queen of the Night’s daughter, with the intention of liberating her from irrationality and ignorance, in the same way as Europe occupied Africa with the excuse of enlightening “the dark continent”. Kentridge also refers to Plato’s metaphors of light and shadow; notably the cave parable from the dialogue The Republic (374 B.C.) where it is suggested that we have a moral responsibility to liberate the prisoners of ignorance and drive them out into the light towards the true knowledge of the world.
The design of the miniature theatre hence originates from the model that Kentridge worked on for the production of The Magic Flute and large parts of Philip Miller’s soundtrack is referring back to the music from the opera. The projection above our heads and the light that creates the moving images remind us of Plato’s description of the light that streams into the cave. But where both Mozart’s and Plato’s positive attitude towards the enlightenment as a project characterises their work, one could say that Kentridge’s work examines and reflects its flipside: the shadows cast over the world by the light of knowledge. The truth Plato wrote about, does it even exist? What has history taught us? Despite taking its point of departure in central questions from the colonial history, Black Box/Chambre Noire raises essential questions in the world right now.