William Kentridge on ‘The Refusal of Time’

‘The Refusal of Time,’ 2012, is an immersive installation and a meditation on time, space and the complex legacies of colonialism and industry. A multi layered work packed to the brim with references - to early cinematic history, and the science and philosophy of time and images - the work combines visually seductive imagery, sculptural objects, megaphones and sound. ”It’s not a scientific lesson in time,” explains the artist. “But it uses the metaphors scientists use when they’re doing their deepest thinking about time.” Therefore references to Einstein’s theory of relativity and figures like black holes - “a space in which everything disappears, a way of talking about death” - feature throughout the work.

Kentridge uses cinema as ”an artistic, mechanical and optical means of playing with time,” to show time materialized. Cinema can slow time down, replay it, hold it, run it backwards, and by employing these techniques of making time visible, the work shows time, and essentially the trudge of a human life, as “a series of predictable, unremarkable actions that continue until we are worn out.” But within that frame there are also refusals says Kentridge. “Those moments of coherence, of understanding and changing the world, which is the most we can hope for.”

Fragmented and futile in its story telling, ‘The Refusal of Time’ also references the painful histories of colonial wars and anti-colonial revolts in the context of time. In the colonial era the imposition of European time in the colonies was a means of control, Kentridge explains. “The resistance towards time became a metaphor for other kinds of resistance towards other forms of political control.” “In the end” – the artist says polemically – ”the project isn’t really about time. It’s much more about to what extent do we escape our fate? To what extent are we heading towards our fate whether we like it or not? Can we change the world on our way or is this all illusory?”

William Kentridge (b. 1955) is a South African filmmaker, draughtsman, and sculptor. He has produced both animation, set design and sculpture as directing operas at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, USA, and the Royal Opera House in London, UK. His work has been shown around the world, e.g. at dOKUMENTA 10, 11 and 13 Kassel, Germany, the 1999 Venice Biennial, Italy, the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA, the Louvre, Paris, France, and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark. Kentridge’s work is held in numerous private collections worldwide and he is the recipient of many prestigious awards such as the 1999 Carnegie Medal, the 2010 Kyoto Prize and the 2013 Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

William Kentridge's installation 'The Refusal of Time' is a collaboration with composer Philip Miller, filmmaker Catherine Meyburgh & Peter Galison, professor of the history of science and of physics at Harvard University. The work is part of the exhibition ’Thick Time’, at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 16 February – 18 June, 2017. William Kentridge’s installation is also part of the Louisiana Collection.