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.