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William Kentridge: Black Box / Chambre Noire
October, 29, 2005 until January 15, 2006
The Deutsche Guggenheim presents in its exhibition space on Unter den Linden, from October 29, 2005 until January 15, 2006, the commissioned work Black Box / Chambre Noire (2005) by the South African artist William Kentridge. With this multimedia- installation consisting of animated film, kinetic objects, drawings and a mechanical theater in miniature, the Deutsche Guggenheim continues, after the presentation of John Baldessari's work cycle Somewhere Between Almost Right and Not Quite (With Orange), its series of projects commissioned for its own spaces.
William Kentridge’s work reflects a deep engagement with issues of history and memory. Using vigorously reworked charcoal and pastel drawings as the primary basis for his films, he leaves traces of erasure and highly visible pentimenti to suggest the work’s process and an ineffaceable past. Kentridge is also known for his theatrical productions for which he crafts layered, multimedia performances combining objects and their cast shadows, puppets and puppeteers, as well as his signature traces and erasures into moving image projections and set designs. In conceiving of a new art work, the artist took as a point of departure the commission’s originating site—broadly speaking, Germany. In addition to his focus on the history of Africa and South Africa, Kentridge has long exhibited an affinity to German art and culture, creating works inspired by and in response to German visual artists and literary figures. The artist’s most recent work, Black Box / Chambre Noire, was initially conceived while the artist was preparing to direct a major theatrical production of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, creating large-scale set designs and exploring actor staging and projections while utilizing a miniature stage maquette. That work on the Enlightenment-themed opera would lead to Black Box / Chambre Noire, which explores the darker implications of that era’s philosophical legacy, reflects the key process of reversal that so often takes center stage in the artist’s work. In the work, Kentridge considers the term ”black box” in three senses: a ”black box” theater, 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, culpability, and expiation, and 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, particularly the German massacre of the Hereros in Southwest Africa (now Namibia) in 1904, an event considered by some historians to be the first genocide of the twentieth century. In 1885 Southwest Africa became a German protectorate. German settlers increasingly encroached upon and expropriated the land of the Hereros. As the tribe’s frustration rose, the Hereros, led by their chief Samuel Mahareru, launched a revolt against the ruling Germans. German troops, directed by General Lothar von Trotha, launched a swift counterstrike. Despite objections to General von Trotha’s extreme measures by Germans in the colony as well as at home, it wasn’t until 1905, after 75 percent of the Herero population was decimated, that the general was removed from command. South Africa took control of Namibia in 1914 and ruled by force until Namibia gained its independence in 1990. This historical fact relates to William Kentridge’s South African identity, prompting him to question notions of agency and complicity, atonement and grief.
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In engaging issues of trauma and its aftermath, Kentridge explores the Freudian concept of ”Trauerarbeit,” or grief work, a labor which is ongoing, and which dovetails with the artist’s unrelenting and self-reflexive examination of the process of making meaning. In creating a work that reveals the motors of representation, Kentridge renders these means transparent, removing the veil of opacity behind which selective, subjective memories are crafted into grand narratives of history. The process-oriented, at times collaborative aspects of Kentridge’s work results in the complex and richly layered nature of Black Box / Chambre Noire.
Kentridge created numerous drawings for the Black Box theater and animated film, composing drawings onto and out of numerous period texts, including materials the artist came across in trips to Namibia and its national archive. Through the artist’s unique filmic process, these drawings are in turn integrated into the Black Box / Chambre Noire film, combined with the artist’s own footage of Namibia, archival photographs and excerpts from German colonial-era film. Additionally, the music that Kentridge, together with Philip Miller, the composer of the Black Box / Chambre Noire soundtrack, encountered in Namibia has been deftly woven into the piece.
Black Box / Chambre Noire explores the difficulties inherent in representing historical trauma and in reconstructing events and people through the lens of a particular time, place, and politics. In Kentridge’s metaphorical exploration of the Black Box flexibility, fixity, and the future come into play in an exploration of the past. Resisting closure, the work problematizes simplistic constructions of history using binaries of past and present, victim and victimizer, spectacle and spectator.
William Kentridge: Black Box / Chambre Noire was curated by Maria-Christina Villaseñor, Associate Curator of Film and Media Arts, Guggenheim Museum, New York. Accompanying the exhibition, a catalogue published in both in German and English, with essays by the curator as well as the artist is available at a price of € 34.
As Edition No. 33 of the Deutsche Guggenheim, William Kentridge has especially designed a stereoscope with eight stereoscopic photographs related to the work Black Box / Chambre Noire. This limited edition of
100 + XX a.p. is available at a price of € 380 exclusively in the MuseumsShop.
The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive supporting program consisting of lectures, films, music, and children's programs. On Saturday, October 29 at 4 p.m., William Kentridge will speak about his new work during a special Artist's Talk. There are guided tours free of charge each day at 6 p.m. The well-known Lunch Lectures on Wednesdays at 1 p.m. and the guided tours on Sundays at 11:30 a.m., which are devoted to a specific theme, round out the supporting program. For further information on the public programs please have a look at the enclosed release.
>> Download this Pressrelease (PDF)
Read following articles about the exhibition at www.db-artmag.de, Deutsche Bank's online art magazine:
feature // Inside the Black Box / Interview with William Kentridge
Images of the exhibition
are available online at www.photo-files.de/guggenheim in a 300 dpi quality.
Further information at
Deutsche Guggenheim
Contact: Sara Bernshausen
Phone: +49-30-202093-14
Fax: +49-30-202093-20
email: berlin.guggenheim@db.com
Internet: www.deutsche-guggenheim.de
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