For Documenta 13 in 2012, a contemporary art showcase presented every five years in Kassel, Germany, William Kentridge will present The Refusal of Time. The project grows out of a series of ongoing conversations with the Harvard-based science historian, Peter Galison, and wrestles with our changing ideas about time, the history of the standardisation of time and resistance to a linear construction of time and space. It questions our constructed experience of time, and invites alternative interpretations of time. Dancing with Dada was created as part of work towards this larger project – in this way the piece is both complete in itself, and a space for experimentation and testing of ideas. The dance concert premiered at The Market Theatre in Johannesburg in 2011 as part of the Refuse the Hour programme. It integrated dance, live music, strange machines and projection. Philip Miller created original music and sound for the piece, and award-winning dancer and choreographer Dada Masilo both choreographed and performed within it. Sabine Theunissen, Greta Goiris, Catherine Meyburgh and Luc de Wit, who worked with Kentrige on both The Magic Flute and The Nose, also contributed to this production. Goiris created costumes – a rapid assembly of parts, for this piece, rather than detailed control of every detail. Theunissen worked with Kentridge on design of the stage, backdrops and machines. De Wit explored the possibilities for movement on stage; and Meyburgh, together with Snezana Marovic, edited the video. Joanna Dudley sung Miller’s rendering of Berlioz’s song La Spectre de la Rose (from the song cycle Les Nuits d’Ete), and with Ann Masina and Bham Ntabeni used voice as an element of Miller’s soundscape for the piece.
Artworks
About
William Kentridge
William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.
In 2024, in Venice, Kentridge premiered a new nine-episode video series SELF-PORTRAIT AS A COFFEE-POT – a site-specific installation curated by long-time collaborator and curator Carolyn Christov Bakargiev at the Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation. Folowing this, in October, MUBI presented: William Kentridge’s ‘Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot’ Premiere in New York.
In conjunction with the world premiere of his newly commissioned opera The Great Yes, The Great No, which debuted at LUMA Arles in July 2024, the solo exhibition Je n’attends plus (I’m Not Waiting Any Longer) presents a collection of major works, some of which had not been seen in Europe before.
Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2022. An iteration of Kentridge’s Royal Academy survey opened at the Taipei Museum of Fine Arts in May 2024. In the same year Kentridge opened another major survey exhibition, In Praise of Shadows, at The Broad, Los Angeles. In 2023, this exhibition travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums across the globe since the 1990s, including the Luma Foundation, France (2024); Arsenale Institute for Politics of Representation, Venice (2024); Taipei Fine Arts Museum (2024); Museum of Modern Art, New York (1999, 2005, 2010); Albertina Museum, Vienna (2010); Musée du Louvre, Paris (2010); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid (2015); Kunstmuseum Basel (2019); Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2019). The artist has also participated in biennale’s including Documenta in Kassel (2012, 2002, 1997) and the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999, 1993).
Collections include: MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi and Zeitz MoCAA, Cape Town.
Kentridge lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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