WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: The Refusal Of Time

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: "The Refusal of Time" (2014)

Five channel video installation by the great William Kentridge displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (2014)

Kentridge’s aesthetic is an ancient and odd world. The video runs approximately half an hour and begins at 10 and 40 minutes after each hour. It captures time and space in a beautiful and unique manner, by comprising the complex legacies of colonialism and industry.

The Refusal Of Time is a great exhibition capturing certain beautiful moments in time, with a wonderful sound piece in the background throughout the show.There is a lot of movement and a lovely finale. His aesthetic is very Non-linear with a sense of intellectual inspiration.

MEMENTO ANALYSIS

Memento is a psychological thriller directed and written by the very famous Christopher Nolan in 2000.The movie talks about Non-linear time through a series of very interesting images. As Nolan’s other dark psychological thrillers this one also focuses on a non-linear timeline. It begins with the end scene, and eventually concludes with the main character resolving or describing events presented in the film but never quietly explained. The pivotal character, Leonard Shelby suffers from anterograde amnesia, a short-term memory loss in which he cannot make new memories after he was injured. So in order to revenge his wife’s death he use aids such as Polaroid’s, notes and extensive tattoos to help keep track of things and certain events.

The movie structures a labyrinth in a very unique narrative. It has a certain scenes that are told backwards and forward in certain increments of story time. The movie alternates between color and black and white sequences. The black and white sequences proceed in chronological order while the color sequences proceed in reverse order, along with close-ups that are used for examining certain shots. It has an unconventional story telling showcased in a non-linear narrative structure.

SOUND: Fading Away

Sound creation is just another perspective of engaging with the process of the cosmos formation and there are several upcoming artists that are now working in this medium.

In the project, we had to collect sound clips from our surrounding and then mimic and play with them in Adobe Premier by focusing on certain heavy sounds and the idea to experiment with juxtaposition of durations. I put together sounds that comprises of the elevator opening and closing, the rain water falling on the ground, people walking with heavy steps, jumping around and eventually through this project wanted to depict an image of someone walking out of a building, walking a block in pouring rain and returning back in the building using the elevator and reaching his/her destination by in lastly blacking it out, by fading the noise into somewhat nowhere. 

SEQUENTIAL MOVEMENT: It's Bananas Time

In this project I drew images on an 18x24 in Bristol paper, took a photo in every step of the drawing with my camera, and erased a certain part and re-drew again and then put all the parts together in Adobe Premier. This procedure was repeated for several drawings and a couple of hours. It is my first animated clip where the focus was on the movement and specifically arranging the movement at a great speed. This short animation is about a monkey climbing a ladder and I have shown it coming down the ladder from the other side where the bananas are waiting, thus my video is titled "It's Bananas Time."

 The whole process highlighted on the drawing and the repetition of the sequential movement. A great example of this is the work by William Kentridge who is essentially keeps erasing and redrawing a portion of the movement o the same paper, photographing it each time. If I could make changes I would like to experiment more with this method of erasing and redrawing and thereby adding layers, changing speed and focusing on certain parts, but overall I thoroughly enjoyed and learnt a new medium through this project.

PROPOSAL FOR FINAL PROJECT: Non Linear Time

PRESENTATION IDEA

Presenting non- linear time involves breaking from the single direction of time's arrow. Putting aside the logical progression from point A to point B in time, we break time by rearranging moments, going backwards, repetition, looping, changing durations and speeds and create multiple branch offs or progressions.

For My Final Project for Time class, I have decided to present “the action of applying make up over your face, while at the same time, along the process the person putting the make-up is always not sure and tries to undo every time, in every step of the way. I am going to be filming a friend who will be sitting inside an empty room with a mirror in front of her face, depicting her reflection. The process of Make up trial deals with sequential steps but I will film her face all dressed up with makeup as my first shot and will gradually show the whole process from backwards and also by rearranging certain moments and putting layers, and different filters on it.

Non Linear PART of My Project:

·      The starting of the video backwards showing a girl with fully covered makeup and the last shot being her being without the makeup, depicting a whole different image through that.

·      Secondly I’ll be breaking the process of doing anything in a chronological order and instead there will be repetition as she will be doing and undoing her makeup all this while.

For sound of the film, I am not too sure yet as I want to have a positive but at the same time a kind of dark reflection as a background score. Still figuring out if I’ll have a voice over the video.

My Inspiration for this project is from The Odyssey by Homer in which one of the characters named Penelope who spends all her day long just weaving. And during the whole process she is deliberately unraveling it. She starts off spinning her thread, which prolongs for a while. But we understand the feeling she goes through as a woman who really did have to spend most of her life ensuring that her household was clothed, even regular weaving would have felt endless. At the end showing her obsession with textiles too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD4BIVskN9M

LABYRINTHS: Short Response On Borges Reading

Please read the short story by Borges entitled "Circular Ruins" and "The Library of Babel". Please compose a short written response to the story considering the concept of a labyrinths (and the numerous forms of a labyrinth in the story).

 In his stories titled “The Circular Ruins” and “The library of Babel” the author Jorge Luis Borges talks about the concept of labyrinths and its various forms in his stories. His work makes the readers questions about various possibilities and ways of doing things and thus forming a labyrinth of questions that have somewhat substance or a reason in them. According to Borges the ideal world is comprised of fictional stories and characters and its various dynamics. His different and unique style of approaching things leads us wonder if this fictional universe exists. His stories depict meaning in their work, as an art piece is very aesthetic in nature. His stories depict that if you can create chaos if you take away information. What is real or not can also be defined due to differences in culture, religion or communication. And thus Labyrinth can be physical, liberal or of informal value. Borges thereby uses time as labyrinth by looping complex and intricate series of events with unexpected endings in his stories.