William Kentridge
What Have They Done with All the Air?
Summary
William Kentridge talks about his current exhibition of new drawings and sculptures at the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. “What Have They Done with All the Air?” features works related to a new theatre production in the making, titled “The Great Yes, the Great No”, in which Kentridge uses the journey of a ship from Marseille to Martinique as a prompt for unpacking power, colonialism and migration. William Kentridge is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.
William Kentridge
Internationally renowned artist William Kentridge works across mediums of drawing, writing, film, performance, music, theater, and collaborative practices to create works of art that are grounded in politics, science, literature, and history, always maintaining a space for contradiction and uncertainty. His work has been seen in museums and galleries around the world since the 1990s and can be found in the collections of art museums and institutions across the globe. He has directed operas for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, La Scala in Milan, English National Opera in London, the Sydney Opera House, and the Salzburg Festival. His original works for stage combine performance, projections, shadow play, voice, and music, and include the Refusal of Time (2012), The Head & the Load (2018), and Waiting for the Sibyl (2020). He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities including Yale, Columbia, and the University of London. Prizes include the Kyoto Prize (2010), the Princesa de Asturias Award (2017), the Praemium Imperiale Prize (2019), and an Olivier award in 2023.
No, I don’t see myself as a playwright because that involves sort of sitting down and writing the script. I’m a reluctant playwright. In other words, I’m responsible for getting the librettos together of these original works that we do. But I absolutely rely on the good writing of many, many other people, lines of different poetry, fragments. So I’m a reluctant writer. I see the making of the text a bit like the way one would make a drawing. Starting somewhere in the middle and making the process of making the drawing, the process of discovering what the drawing is at the end. And the texts are assembled in the same way. I’m reluctant to ask a writer just to write the libretto because I know I’ll chop it up and destroy a lot of work that they’ve done. So these other lines, which are taken simply as single lines is a more comfortable way for me to work, but I’m not a novelist. So the narrative arrives at the end and it’s not a thriller, it’s not a plot driven piece. There’s an arc, a trajectory, from the embarkation to the disembarkation with the journey across with the storm and the doldrums. And hopefully there’s an energy and a journey that we all follow on this ship.
What are my absolutes? I’m sure there are, but I would be, you know, the common absolutes that everyone has, protection of family, protection of friends, these kind of things are absolutes. Responding against evil where one sees it, but even in that context, understanding how limited our view is and how partial our view is, it doesn’t stop on having a very strong response and a necessary response. But as you know, what happens is very quickly, certainty has to transform itself into rage and to louder and louder shouting, hoping to get your point across. And what one is left with is the rage of certainty rather than any argument that can be expressed in that moment. I mean, it’s very clear when people are adamant, how soon any kind of reflection disappears.