Graduate-Student Papers on Cultural Politics
Date and Time
Location
"Animation Against Apartheid: William Kentridge and the Politics of Mime"
Speaker:
Harmon Siegel, PhD Candidate, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University.
Contact:
Heather Conrad
hconrad@wcfia.harvard.edu
Chair:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Abstract:
South African artist William Kentridge is internationally recognized for his animated drawings, which he has made since 1989, and which are usually considered as statements against apartheid. This paper considers one of Kentridge’s animations, his 1997 work Ubu Tells the Truth, an adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu which reimagines the titular character as an Afrikaner torturer seeking amnesty for his crimes. I argue that, in this work, Kentridge not only confronts immediate political reality, but the broader question of how artworks in general—and theater in particular—can deal with systemic and institutional evils. Kentridge responds to this challenge by drawing on his training as a mime, opposing the psychological, mnemonic techniques of method acting to mime’s emphasis on bodily improvisation.