William Kentridge

Everything can be saved. Everything is provisional. A prior action is rescued by that which follows. A drawing abandoned is revived by the next drawing...The smudges of erasure thicken time in film, but they also serve as a record of the days and months spent making the film-- a record of thinking in slow motion.



Walking, thinking, stalking the image. Many of the hours spent in the studio are hours of walking, pacing back and forth across the space gathering the energy, the clarity to make the first mark...It is as if before the work can begin (the visible finished work of the drawing, film, or sculpture), a different, invisible work must be done.



Sarastro, the high priest in Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE, guides the hero of the opera in his journey toward wisdom. As a symbol of the Enlightenment, Sarastro combines all knowledge with all power. In the 219 years since Mozart wrote the opera we have come to realize what a tragic combination (because with knowledge or wisdom comes also certainty of that wisdom) and the right to a monopoly of violence.