Animated journeys.

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: 7 FRAGMENTS FOR GEORGES MELIES

MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART AT THE PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

DECEMBER 11, 2005-FEBRUARY 26, 2006

Born in Johannesburg in 1955, William Kentridge became internationally known in the 1990s as a creator of stop-motion animations. His politically savvy films use his native South Africa as the setting for explorations into politics, race, gender, and the changing self. Two fictitious characters inhabit these works as his alter egos, and their images come to life through the artist's erasing and redrawing with charcoal on paper.

Rather than present work for a single screen, or a series of screens in relation to the drawings, Kentridge created an installation for his new work "7 Fragments for Georges Melies." Multiple projections filled the space at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, each becoming a moving canvas on the wall. Nine discrete films make up the installation: Journey to the Moon, Day for Night, and the seven-part 7 Fragments for Georges Melies (all 2003). French director Georges Melies was a pioneer in the world of science fiction films, transforming the effects of vaudeville and shadow projections into cinema. As the writer, director, actor, and filmmaker, Melies had total control of his productions. With Melies's film A Trip to the Moon (1902) as a point of departure, Kentridge used books and objects from his studio as props in these fantasy films.

Like Melies, Kentridge functions as creative director, actor, writer, and cinematographer in his productions. Furthermore, a background in puppetry helped Kentridge to form connections between drawing, performance, and filmmaking. The films in this installation are his first to combine live action and stop-motion. These works were shot using both a 16mm camera at twenty-four frames per second as well as a 35mm animation camera at one frame per second. These fragments were edited together and transferred to video. Kentridge either adds to or subtracts from a drawing, walks to the camera and films a few frames, then walks back to the drawing for the next step.

The process of drawing, walking from the drawing to the camera and back, and thinking about that sequence of events, led Kentridge to Bruce Nauman's early films where Nauman explored the boundaries of his studio space. The idea of the artist in his studio, the relationship between what is real and what is imagined or drawn, became the subject of Melies's films. The 7 Fragments are short loops that depict Kentridge examining things in his studio, drawing, walking, and tossing books into the air. Kentridge plays with forward and backward motion, often filming himself walking in reverse in slow motion, knowing the footage would be presented backward. A ripped drawing reconstitutes itself, ink moves through the air back into the bottle, and books miraculously fly from the floor to Kentridge's hand. These moments become surreal and magical within the context of the installation. The seven films loop continuously and are not always in sync. While there are obvious relationships between them, they are not meant to be viewed one after the other; rather, they become the raw material for the longer film, Journey to the Moon.

In Journey to the Moon, Kentridge uses some of the same props that figured in the shorter films, as well as drawn elements. He explains, "If the seven earlier fragments are about wandering around the studio waiting for something to happen, Journey to the Moon was an attempt to escape." (1) In the film, drawings within a dictionary house a map as well as the technical diagrams for a rocket ship. Using an espresso cup as a telescope, Kentridge looks out the window at the skies beyond. He transforms an espresso maker into a rocket that blasts off toward the moon. The lunar landscape, as seen through the studio window, is an animated drawing of Johannesburg. Kentridge performs for the camera, playing the scientist/artist who dreams of worlds afar, encounters a muse, but ultimately cannot escape.

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Journey to the Moon is presented opposite another large-scale projection titled Day for Night, which references Francois Truffaut's film La nuit americaine (1973), as well as the process of shooting. A fluttering line of white specks populates a dark foreground. The specks cohere, then spread out into what appears to be a celestial sky. In reality, this is a film about ants. Fascinated by the patterns made by ants that invaded his home, Kentridge began to film their movements. He was able to control where they traveled using sugar water, and he recorded their activities on film. By presenting the finished work as a negative, he transformed day into night, or rather black into white, creating the illusion of infinite space.

These films explore the magic of cinema by combining live action and animated drawing with simple effects. Kentridge's whimsical works, made without digital technologies, serve as a reminder of what was and what is still possible in both the drawn and the filmed worlds.

JODY ZELLEN is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, California.

NOTE

1. Quote by William Kentridge first published in William Kentridge (Visby, Sweden: BAC Baltic Art Center, 2003); and republished in William Kentridge (Torino, Italy: Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, 2004).