William Kentridge Projects
Drawings for Projection
1989 – 2020
Everything can be saved. Everything is provisional. A prior action is rescued by that which follows. A drawing abandoned is revived by the next drawing...
ExploreEverything can be saved. Everything is provisional. A prior action is rescued by that which follows. A drawing abandoned is revived by the next drawing...
Oh To Believe in Another World
2022
Explore the creation of the Kentridge film Oh To Believe in another world, made to accompany the performance of Shostakovich Symphony No. 10...
ExploreExplore the creation of the Kentridge film Oh To Believe in another world, made to accompany the performance of Shostakovich Symphony No. 10...
Waiting for the Sibyl
2019
The project at Rome Opera, Waiting for the Sibyl, comes from an invitation from the opera house to make a companion piece to the 1968 piece by the American artist Alexander Calder, called Work in Progress. The 1968 piece is a beautiful, whimsical almost-happening of the era...
ExploreThe project at Rome Opera, Waiting for the Sibyl, comes from an invitation from the opera house to make a companion piece to the 1968 piece by the American artist Alexander Calder, called Work in Progress. The 1968 piece is a beautiful, whimsical almost-happening of the era...
The Head & the Load
2018
The Head & the Load is about Africa and Africans in the First World War, that is to say about the contradictions and paradoxes of colonialism that were heated and compressed by the circumstances of the war. It is about historical incomprehension (and inaudibility and invisibility)...
The Head & the Load is about Africa and Africans in the First World War, that is to say about the contradictions and paradoxes of colonialism that were heated and compressed by the circumstances of the war. It is about historical incomprehension (and inaudibility and invisibility)...
Wozzeck
2017
I think I am interested in awkward operas. Operas in which there are unsolved riddles. Operas in which there is a space, both musically and thematically for a world to evolve and be imagined around the story. There has to be a challenge somewhere in it. It has to be a machine for thinking...
ExploreI think I am interested in awkward operas. Operas in which there are unsolved riddles. Operas in which there is a space, both musically and thematically for a world to evolve and be imagined around the story. There has to be a challenge somewhere in it. It has to be a machine for thinking...
Triumphs and Laments
2016
This project, a frieze on the walls of the Lungotevere between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini, a distance of some 500 metres, was many years in the making. It was promoted, pushed and brought to fruition by Kristin Jones...
ExploreThis project, a frieze on the walls of the Lungotevere between Ponte Sisto and Ponte Mazzini, a distance of some 500 metres, was many years in the making. It was promoted, pushed and brought to fruition by Kristin Jones...
O Sentimental Machine
2015
The Istanbul Biennale: This was the concrete beginning of the project, an invitation by the curator to think of doing a work there, specifically to work on Büyükada Island which is a small holiday island about an hour and a half off the coast of Istanbul in the sea of Marmara...
ExploreThe Istanbul Biennale: This was the concrete beginning of the project, an invitation by the curator to think of doing a work there, specifically to work on Büyükada Island which is a small holiday island about an hour and a half off the coast of Istanbul in the sea of Marmara...
Notes Towards a Model Opera
2015
The eponymous 3 channel film installation sits at the core of this body of work, rooted in the aesthetics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution...
The eponymous 3 channel film installation sits at the core of this body of work, rooted in the aesthetics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution...
More Sweetly Play the Dance
2015
The procession is a form I have used many times before, trying to encompass in the work the muchness of the people in the world. And to record the fact that here in the twenty-first century human foot power is still the primary means of locomotion and we are still locked in the manual labour of individual bodies as a way of making the world...
ExploreThe procession is a form I have used many times before, trying to encompass in the work the muchness of the people in the world. And to record the fact that here in the twenty-first century human foot power is still the primary means of locomotion and we are still locked in the manual labour of individual bodies as a way of making the world...
The Refusal of Time & Refuse the Hour
2012
When mass is huge, gravity grows until it is irresistible. A black hole traps all that passes, allowing out of its gravitational field no object, no light, no trace of light, that has been attracted to it...
ExploreWhen mass is huge, gravity grows until it is irresistible. A black hole traps all that passes, allowing out of its gravitational field no object, no light, no trace of light, that has been attracted to it...
The Nose
2010
A man wakes up to find that he has lost his nose. In 1837, Gogol writes a short story about the man’s attempts to find the missing proboscis and to reattach it to his face. Gogol considers the story that he has just recounted, concluding that it is a strange and improbable tale...
A man wakes up to find that he has lost his nose. In 1837, Gogol writes a short story about the man’s attempts to find the missing proboscis and to reattach it to his face. Gogol considers the story that he has just recounted, concluding that it is a strange and improbable tale...
Black Box / Chambre Noire
2005
"Black Box/Chambre Noire" is an installation made up of a mechanised model theatre, drawings, kinetic sculptures and animated film projections...
Explore"Black Box/Chambre Noire" is an installation made up of a mechanised model theatre, drawings, kinetic sculptures and animated film projections...
The Magic Flute
2005
The preliminary work on the drawings and animations for Zauberflöte were done in my studio in Johannesburg and tested on a model of the stage with wooden cut out figures. A good way of working with the video. One of the main unanswered questions was how to find a good relationship between the live singers and the projected drawings. So that the projections are not just backdrops, that they do not make the singers invisible, and that the live performer and the projection are not at odds. Not possible on the model but to be resolved on stage, in rehearsal...
ExploreThe preliminary work on the drawings and animations for Zauberflöte were done in my studio in Johannesburg and tested on a model of the stage with wooden cut out figures. A good way of working with the video. One of the main unanswered questions was how to find a good relationship between the live singers and the projected drawings. So that the projections are not just backdrops, that they do not make the singers invisible, and that the live performer and the projection are not at odds. Not possible on the model but to be resolved on stage, in rehearsal...
Fragments for Georges Méliès
2003
Kentridge's 9 channel film installation, made using a combination of animated charcoal drawings, stop motion animation and live action film...
ExploreKentridge's 9 channel film installation, made using a combination of animated charcoal drawings, stop motion animation and live action film...
Ubu
1996 – 1997
In South Africa at the moment there is a battle between the paper shredders and the photostat machines. For each police general who is shredding documents of his past, there are officers under him who are photocopying them to keep as insurance against future prosecutions...
In South Africa at the moment there is a battle between the paper shredders and the photostat machines. For each police general who is shredding documents of his past, there are officers under him who are photocopying them to keep as insurance against future prosecutions...
The Centre for the Less Good Idea
Since 2016
The Centre aims to find the less good idea by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects. It is a physical and immaterial incubator space to pursue incidental discoveries made in the process of producing work...
ExploreThe Centre aims to find the less good idea by creating and supporting experimental, collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts projects. It is a physical and immaterial incubator space to pursue incidental discoveries made in the process of producing work...
