15 June 2006
Black Box/Chambre Noire, the latest project of internationally renowned South African artist William Kentridge, is on at the Johannesburg Art Gallery until 9 July.
Sponsored by Deutsche Bank, the work was commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin and shown to huge acclaim in the German gallery from October 2005 until January this year.
In the work, Kentridge creates a mechanical, miniaturised world theatre, an elegy to forgotten history that includes themes from Mozart's The Magic Flute and the German genocide of the Namibian Herero.
"Deutsche Bank in South Africa are delighted to be sponsoring William Kentridge's latest project along with the Johannesburg Art Gallery and Deutsche Guggenheim," said Martin Kingston, chairperson of Deutsche Bank in South Africa.
"Kentridge is recognised as one of the most important artists of our time, and his ability to blend formal technique with an emotionally complex understanding of sociopolitical history will hopefully appeal to many people."
In addition to his body of work exploring the history of Africa and South Africa, Kentridge has long shown an affinity with German art and culture, creating works inspired by or in response to German visual artists and literary figures.
The artist began to explore the history of German colonialism in Africa through the lens of its colonial era cinema. The process began while Kentridge was preparing to direct a major production of The Magic Flute. This work led him to Black Box/Chambre Noire, which explores the darker implications of that era's philosophical legacy.
Kentridge's work reflects a deep engagement with issues of history and memory. He uses reworked charcoal and pastel drawings as the primary basis for his films.
He is also known for his collaborations with the Handspring Puppet Company, with whom he has crafted complex, multimedia performances combining puppets, animation, and live performance. In theatrical productions and video sculptures, he has employed objects and their cast shadows, the puppet and the hand of the puppeteer, as well as his signature traces and erasures.
Black Box/Chambre Noire consists of animated films, kinetic sculptural objects, drawings and a mechanised theatre in miniature.
In the work, Kentridge considers the term "black box" in three senses: a "black box" theatre, a "chambre noire" as it relates to photography, and the "black box" flight data recorder used to record information in an airline disaster.
Kentridge explores constructions of history and meaning, while examining the processes of grief, guilt and culpability as well as the shifting vantage points of political engagement and responsibility. The development of visual technologies and the history of colonialism intersect in Black Box/Chambre Noire through Kentridge's reflection on the history of the German colonial presence in Africa, in particular the 1904 German massacre of the Hereros in South West Africa (now Namibia).
"I'm looking at German colonisation in reference to Namibia for the exhibition," says Kentridge. "I went there to look at the place where there was a great massacre of the Herero by the Germans from 1904 to 1907. Some of that archival material and footage shot in the mountain where the genocide began is in the final piece."
The curator of Black Box/Chambre Noire is Maria-Christina Villaseñor, associate curator of film and media arts at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Black Box/Chambre Noire opened at the Johannesburg Art Gallery on Sunday 7 May and runs until 9 July 2006.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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