ABSTRACT
William Kentridge’s work represents the most careful and fascinating engagement with time of any of the artists or filmmakers engaged in this study—and perhaps in any study involving cinema. His Harvard Norton lectures (published as Six Drawing Lessons [2014]) reveal a deep understanding of questions of entropy, classical versus quantum time, of Newtonian linear temporality versus post-Newtonian relativity, and much more. He constructed amazing installation pieces, like “Refusal of Time,” to enact this challenge, and simultaneously grounded his work in the politics of protest in South Africa, as seen in his first important film Felix in Exile and installations like The Refusal of Time. To illustrate the impact of his work, we will engage Méliès’s early groundbreaking film, Le Voyage dans la lune, and compare its deployment of space and time with those elements in Kentridge’s films and artwork.
