Art History and Image Studies
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Browsing Art History and Image Studies by Author "Opperman, Johannes Arnoldus"
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Item Open Access Retrospektiewe vervreemding van tegnologiese media: animasieprosesse by William Kentridge(University of the Free State, 2013-01) Opperman, Johannes Arnoldus; Van den Berg, Dirk J.English: Although the South-African artist, William Kentridge has practised his creativity in many domains (as observer, activist, artist, storyteller and thinking director) in a wide range of media (including land art, sculpture, etching and stage and theatre productions), it is chiefly his large charcoal drawings in process (drawings for animation) and his unique, short, handmade, animated films and their projection that have given him international fame. The question has arisen how technological media underwent a process of retrospect-tive alienation in William Kentridge’s animation processes. The development of Kentridge’s large wall drawings to drawings for animation and projection is discussed, while mark making, montage and editing within the greater filmic whole, are emphasized. For Kentridge his drawings for animation (1988–1996) and drawings for projection (1996 to the present) remain central themes in all the new media and multimedia performances. In this study research was done to determine which methods and techniques Kentridge used, as a film director to edit a sequence of drawings into an animated film. Consequently, his dramatic, narrative and critical combination of interdisciplinary media like drawing, language, photography and film, video and theatre productions are emphasized. The drawing as an image creating process and Kentridge’s agency (his sleight of hand, drawing actions, unique mark textures, gramma and graphein, mark making and superimposition) were explored in order to create a unique image. The emphasis has been on how Kentridge made his drawings by means of charcoal, pastel and an eraser by making marks on paper, then erasing certain marks and again making new marks over those previous ones, while constantly filming the creation process (his so-called stone age animation). The focus has been on his use of the drawing hand as an intelligent, mark making and mark changing tool (performance). Through his use of outdated film and animation technologies, techniques and technological media which he transposed to a contemporary environment and current technological infrastructure and made comments on, he exhibited the meta-referential and expressive features of his medium. Kentridge has created art that connects with the new media concepts through his skilful integration of the charcoal drawing medium with existing technologies. By means of editing, montage, special effects and film tricks he opened new possibilities to animation as an art and cinematic form that would eventually be projected as an imaginary artwork (animated fiction). Even after nine films in the Drawings for projection series Kentridge still used his unique stone age animation technique and made new films. After some time Kentridge started to make existing literary works, dramatic texts and librettos his own and gave it an African flavour. His use of projection technology and various projection techniques contributed to the success of the visual narrative element. Kentridge’s expression of the shadow as image, profile image drawings and his moving silhouette processions are discussed. From the late 1980s William Kentridge added projection to his Drawings for projection, his animated film and video images. By means of some old (for example Baroque theatre) and contemporary theatre technology (like projectors and computers) he projected his animations in galleries, on miniature theatre models, the stage space, stage décor and screens, while live actors, opera singers, puppets, marionettes and their manipulators, as well as mechanical dolls/automata performed in the foreground of the multimedia stage productions. By adding marionettes and automata to his animated drawings, he created full-fledged narrative and dramatic artworks. Kentridge’s appropriation of discarded and outdated visual technologies, “retrospec-tive alienation” of various processes of visualizing and medializing (in the early stages of the history of modernism of the Western visual media) and their addition to animation procedures have become distinctive of his art.