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wiLLiAM KENtRidgE
96
William Kentridge
in conversation with Johan Pousette, 2009
Johan Pousette: Please describe your work, and why you
have chosen to continue with this frame by frame addition
and reduction process?
William Kentridge: My work starts off as drawing but ends
sometimes as drawing, sometimes as film, sometimes as
theater. If I was to work in a different way I would need the
assistance of different technicians, and that would change
the rhythm of work. There is something about the charcoal
drawing and the erasure which sets something in place, you
can´t look back of what you have done, there is no video
playback on what you have just drawn, you can only think
forward on what the next frame will be. I think that is an
important difference between digital and manual animation
—the fact that you can´t immediately see what you have done.
So it´s about the thinking forward rather than checking
yourself backwards. It is a slow process, which is also
the process of reflection.
JP: When we worked together on the production of “7 Fragments…”
you seemed to enjoy a very playful working
process. How does intuition and intellectual thinking act
together in your work?
WK: Sometimes it´s joyful, sometimes it´s very depressing
because it doesn´t work out. But the attitude of allowing the
process to play you, to inform the work, is important. It´s
not so much intuition, but its very much believing that some-
where between knowing in advance what you are doing and
the hazardness of allowing anything to happen, somewhere
between certainty and pure chance, is in fact where the
work develops in it´s most interesting way. So for example
in the work What will Come (has already come), I knew I
was going to do an anamorphic film, but what I didn´t
understand was what would happen as the image started to
turn, and the turning image became the key to me in being
able to make the project, the fact that the screen doesn´t have
an end, that the image goes all the way around, was some-
thing I hadn´t anticipated or thought much about in advance.
That was something I discovered in the process of making
and that kind of discovery was essential for thinking, not just
making the film, but also thinking about it.
JP: The Russian artist Ilya Kabakov almost has taken on a
mission to tell about the absurdities in former Soviet Union.
Since African colonial history and the relation between
Europe and the former colonies is a re-occurring theme in
your work: Do you feel that you have undertaken a similar
mission to tell about the terrible consequences of colonialism
in Africa?
WK: I don´t have the same specific project as Kabakov. But
I´m certainly interested in colonial history, so the Black Box
piece looked at the German genocide in Namibia in 1904,
and What will come looks at Italy in Ethiopia in the 1930’s.
The Faustus in Africa theatre production was really looking
at the Belgian Congo and The Magic Flute piece was considering
the Enlightenment project, the project of bringing
light to the dark continent, as colonialism described itself to
itself. So if I look back there have been a number of works
over many years that have looked at colonial history. But for
me it is also about looking at the limits of the Enlightenment
and the costs of the Enlightenment, and I would say that
colonialism was one.
JP: You are dealing with serious subjects such as colonialism,
fascism and tyranny. Do you think that art today has a power
and potency to make a difference regarding politics or social
engagement?
WK: I think it has a potency, as it always has had. If not
to change people´s perception, but to confirm people´s per-
ceptions of things they are uncertain of. How we construct
ourselves out of things we read, things we have seen,
generally confirms impulses that we already have, and
strengthens them and shows that our perception might
be a more broad thing.
In that sense I have a complete belief in the power and
the essentialism of art. And certainly in the way people con-
struct themselves is how they act in the world. But that´s not
something that is in my head when I´m doing the work.
My art is not political in the sense that it has an instrumental
end it´s trying to achieve. If politics is about the exercise
of power it is about the reflection of the exercise of power.
JP: Could you give a background on What will Come and its
references to how Italian fascists annexed Ethiopia by force
and a large number of Ethiopians lost their lives in a genocide?
WK: The title of the work What will Come (has already
come) is a Ghanaian proverb. On one hand it refers literally
to an image that starts at one end of the cylinder and doesn´t
have an end, it continues. But it´s more about a kind of spiral
where you come back to where you have been, a cyclic view
of the world. Saying that as everything unfolds, what will
come is impregnated and absolutely based on what has been.
The Italian involvement was central in what happened
at that time, and very much of the colonial history is still
being played out very directly today. It also came out of the
fact that until recently the Italians denied the use of poison
gas by the air force during that campaign, and that also had
to do with the idea of weapons of mass destruction and
chemical weapons which were seen as so terrifying in Iraq,
as if the West had never used them.
So it has to do with all these kinds of historical things
that both goes back to colonial history and unfolds into
where we are now.
JP: Why have you chosen such an unusual drawing process
in this work? Does this connect to your interest in pre-cinematic
technology, or is it more a reflection on the relativity
of visual perception?
WK: It is connected to pre-cinematic technology, in combination
with taking responsibility for what we see. As a kind
of metaphor for taking responsibility for the history of which
we are part.
Pages 90–91 and 94–95:
What Will Come (has already come), 2007
35mm film transferred to video, 8 minutes 40 seconds
installation view, photo: john hodgkiss
Projection onto table top with polished steel cylinder
courtesy the artist, marian goodman gallery, New york and the
goodman gallery, johannesburg
william kentridge was born 1955 in johannesburg, south africa, where he lives and works. The work of william kentridge
meshes the personal and the political in an innovative use of charcoal drawing, animation, film and theatre. his work has been
seen in museums throughout Europe, japan and the Usa, with exhibitions this year at moma in New york, the louvre in Paris,
and the albertina museum in vienna. he is the recipient of several international awards and honorary doctorates, and this year
will receive the kyoto Prize in arts and Philosophy.
What we do when we see, the active role we play in
constructing what it is that we see, understanding what it is
that we see. The anamorphic film is a sort of demonstration
of this.
JP: In What will come the soundtrack is an Italian marching
song of the fascists under Mussolini and a composition by
Shostakovich based on a Jewish song. What is the role of
music in this work and in your work in general?
WK: It´s an interesting song, it´s called “little black face”
(facetta nera) and is sung to an Ethiopean woman saying
“We bring you a new kind of slavery, it is the slavery of love,
and we bring you a new law and a new liberty, and soon you
too will be wearing a little black shirt”. Everyone still knows
the song, and it´s a common cell phone ring tune. The other
song is a part of the Shostakovich string quartet, which I
think is based on a Jewish song. It is from the 1930´s, so
more or less contemporaneous with the Italian fascist song.
The music is an essential part of the construction of the
films. I work with a composer who starts finding the music
quite early in the process. And sometimes, as with the fascist
song in What will come has already come, it is essential to
allowing the project to find its shape.
JP: If colonialism described itself as “a project of bringing
light into darkness”, how do you think this way of thinking
can be translated into contemporary politics?
WK: In some ways it can. As a mixture between the best
intentions in the world, that was part of the colonial project,
but understanding how lost that got in the reality of having
to conquer and rule another country. There are obvious
echoes with American hubris about knowing what is best
for the world, and the costs that brings. It is certainly about
assuming knowledge and power going together.
JP: Can an awareness of our history help us to understand
the world?
WK: I am absolutely convinced of that. Without understanding
history, which is to say understanding that where we are
now is not a static position but a process and the unfolding
of something that began a long time ago, it is impossible to
make sense of where we are now.
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