Mourning Work:
Deutsche Bank is sponsoring William
Kentridge’s installation “Black Box / Chambre Noire” at the Johannesburg
Art Gallery
William
Kentridge, Untitled,
(drawing
for Black Box/Chambre Noire), 2005
Photo:
John Hodgkiss Deutsche Guggenheim, © William Kentridge
A
dancing rhinoceros, paper figures that glide across a puppet theater stage
as though moved by the hand of a ghost, the music of Mozart, animated
charcoal drawings, and documentary film images – William
Kentridge’s Black Box/Chambre Noire combines a highly
aesthetic treatment with the investigation of a historical trauma. The
subject of his multi-layered installation, in which the Freudian term "Trauerarbeit"
or mourning work plays a central role, is the 1904 massacre on the Herero
tribe by the German colonialists in German Southwest Africa, today
Namibia.
William
Kentridge, Untitled,
(drawing
for Black Box/Chambre Noire), 2005
Photo:
John Hodgkiss Deutsche Guggenheim, © William Kentridge
Now,
Deutsche Bank is
sponsoring the first presentation of Black Box/Chambre Noire in
South Africa. The installation will be on show through July 9 at the
country’s largest museum, the Johannesburg
Art Gallery, founded in 1910. Kentridge’s miniature mechanical theater
is accompanied by charcoal drawings and a large-scale wall painting that
the artist created especially for the Johannesburg exhibition.
William
Kentridge, Wall painting for the exhibition
Black
Box/Chambre Noire, Johannesburg Art Gallery
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Even at the exhibition opening, one could sense that
Kentridge’s work deeply moves the public, especially in his home country
of South Africa. 500 visitors came to the Johannesburg museum to see his Black
Box. Not only the art public, but even the museum guards kept
returning to the miniature theater to gaze at the oppressive and surreal
images Kentridge has created in an effort to address a repressed chapter
of German colonial history. Black Box/Chambre Noire refers to the
horrendous crime troops of the Kaiserreich committed in 1904 in German
Southwest Africa. The Herero tribe was almost completely extinguished
in a massacre that German units painstakingly planned – some historians
regard it as the first genocide of the 20th century.
William
Kentridge, Black Box/Chambre Noire, 2005
Photo:
John Hodgkiss Deutsche Guggenheim, © William Kentridge
Kentridge’s
installation was created on commission for the Deutsche
Guggenheim, where it was shown with overwhelming success from October
2005 to January of this year. The three levels of meaning in the title Black
Box/Chambre Noire refer to the theater as the "black box", to the
"chambre noire" or photographer’s darkroom, and to the black box that
contains flight information documenting airplane catastrophes. For his
point of departure, Kentridge chose Germany, the home country of the
commissioning museum. Many of the artist’s works have researched the
history of Africa and South Africa; beyond this, he has long felt
connected to German culture and has produced works inspired by German
artists or literary figures.
William
Kentridge, Black Box/Chambre Noire, 2005
Photo:
John Hodgkiss Deutsche Guggenheim, © William Kentridge
Kentridge’s
investigation of the theme of German colonialism was also influenced by
his involvement with Mozart’s
Magic
Flute, a production of which he was working on parallel to Black
Box/Chambre Noire. His installation contains both the stage model as
an object and the theme of the Enlightenment; it investigates the darker
repercussions of the philosophical legacy of this era while reflecting
upon the central process of inversion that often forms the focus of his
works. The motif of the "Black Box" constitutes a background for the
construction of history and meaning – for the process of grieving, crime
and punishment, but also the shifting viewpoints concerning political
commitment and responsibility.
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