KABOOM! is a new three channel film installation created by William Kentridge from material related to his critically acclaimed production, The Head & the Load, which premiered at London’s Tate Modern in July 2018.
A play on the Ghanaian proverb, ‘the head and the load are the troubles of the neck’, this large-scale production expressively speaks to the nearly two million African porters and carriers used by the British, French, and Germans during the First World War in Africa. The Head & The Load takes the form of a processional musical journey and the spirit of the monumental production is recreated by this installation in miniature. KABOOM! fuses visually rich projections, on to a panoramic stage populated layered by sculptural objects, with an immersive soundscape, creating an experience with the energy and pathos of the live performance.
According to Kentridge, the project explores ‘the contradictions and paradoxes of colonialism that were heated and compressed by the circumstances of the war’.