Current Events
Forthcoming Events
Solo exhibition
A Shadow of a Shadow
September 28 – December 8, 2024
Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah
Bait Al Serkal Arts Square
A sporadic record of what happens in the studio, in video, words and images
“The Great Yes, The Great No”
Burgtheater, Vienna
16 to 19 July, 2024
The new chamber opera by William Kentridge, commissioned by LUMA Foundation, in partnership with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence is being performed in Vienna as part of the Impulstanz Festival 2024.
Creative team
Concept | Director: William Kentridge
Associate Directors: Nhlanhla Mahlangu | Phala O. Phala
Choral Composer: Nhlanhla Mahlangu
Music Director: Tlale Makhene
Dramaturg: Mwenya Kabwe
Costume Design: Greta Goiris
Set Design: Sabine Theunissen
Lighting Design: Urs Schönebaum | Elena Gui
Projection Editing | Compositing: Žana Marović | Janus Fouché | Joshua Trappler
Cinematography: Duško Marović
Video Control: Kim Gunning
Performed and created by
Performers: Xolisile Bongwana, Hamilton Dhlamini, William Harding, Tony Miyambo, Nancy Nkusi, Luc de Wit
Dancers: Thulani Chauke & Teresa Phuti Mojela
Chorus: Anathi Conjwa, Asanda Hanabe, Zandile Hlatshwayo, Khokho Madlala, Nokuthula Magubane, Mapule Moloi,Nomathamsanqa Ngoma
Musicians: Marika Hughes (Cello), Nathan Koci (Accordion | Banjo), Tlale Makhene (Percussion), Thandi Ntuli (Piano)
Produced by
THE OFFICE performing arts + film
A project of the Centre for the Less Good Idea
Lead commissioner
LUMA Foundation, Arles, France
Co-Commissioners
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami USA; CAL Performances, Berkeley USA; Centre d’Art Battat, Montreal Canada.
Foundational commissioning support for the development and creation of “The Great Yes, The Great No” is provided by Brown Arts Institute at Brown University.
Toured in partnership Quaternaire
Photograph: Stella Olivier
PERFORMANCE TONIGHT
“Ursonate” by Kurt Schwitters is to be performed by William Kentridge as part of the Impulstanz Festival.
Odeon Theater, Vienna
July 17, 2024 at 19h30
Schwitters’ “Ursonate” (1922 - 1932) is widely regarded as the greatest sound poem of the 20th century. Schwitters also made Dadaist collages and visual artworks but the “Ursonate” is perhaps his most important and influential work.
“The Great Yes, The Great No”
WORLD PREMIERE TONIGHT
LUMA Arles
La Grande Halle
Parc des Ateliers
7 to 10 July, 2024
Tonight marks the world premiere of the new chamber opera by William Kentridge, commissioned by LUMA Foundation, in partnership with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence
Creative team
Concept | Director: William Kentridge
Associate Directors: Nhlanhla Mahlangu | Phala O. Phala
Choral Composer: Nhlanhla Mahlangu
Music Director: Tlale Makhene
Dramaturg: Mwenya Kabwe
Costume Design: Greta Goiris
Set Design: Sabine Theunissen
Lighting Design: Urs Schönebaum | Elena Gui
Projection Editing | Compositing: Žana Marović | Janus Fouché | Joshua Trappler
Cinematography: Duško Marović
Video Control: Kim Gunning
Performed and created by
Performers: Xolisile Bongwana, Hamilton Dhlamini, William Harding, Tony Miyambo, Nancy Nkusi, Luc de Wit
Dancers: Thulani Chauke & Teresa Phuti Mojela
Chorus: Anathi Conjwa, Asanda Hanabe, Zandile Hlatshwayo, Khokho Madlala, Nokuthula Magubane, Mapule Moloi,Nomathamsanqa Ngoma
Musicians: Marika Hughes (Cello), Nathan Koci (Accordion | Banjo), Tlale Makhene (Percussion), Thandi Ntuli (Piano)
Produced by
THE OFFICE performing arts + film
A project of the Centre for the Less Good Idea
Lead commissioner
LUMA Foundation, Arles, France
Co-Commissioners
Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami USA; CAL Performances, Berkeley USA; Centre d’Art Battat, Montreal Canada.
Foundational commissioning support for the development and creation of “The Great Yes, The Great No” is provided by Brown Arts Institute at Brown University.
Toured in partnership Quaternaire
Photographs: Stella Olivier
Installation views from “Je n’attends plus”
LUMA Foundation, Arles
La Mécanique Générale
Until January 12, 2025
A solo exhibition including new drawings, sculpture and a new film installation related to “The Great Yes, The Great No”, a new chamber opera by William Kentridge, commissioned by LUMA Foundation, in partnership with the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.
William Kentridge & Homi K. Bhabha in Conversation
La Grande Halle, Parc des Ateliers
LUMA Foundation, Arles
July 10, 11:30AM
Following the opening of the solo exhibition “Je n’attends plus” at LUMA Foundation, Arles and the world premiere of his new chamber opera “The Great Yes, The Great No”, Kentridge will have a conversation with Homi K. Bhabha at La Grande Halle.
Admission free but booking required:
https://tickets.luma.org/fr/1456-evenement/8650-conversation-entre-william-kentridge-et-homi-k-bhabha/info
“A Night with William Kentridge”
Théâtre Antique, Arles
July 4, 2024
9:45PM - 11:30PM
An evening screening of Kentridge films - including “Second-hand Reading”, “Sibyl”, “Tide Table”, “Tango for Page Turning” and others - introduced and contextualised by the artist at the Théâtre Antique, Arles. Presented by Les Rencontres d’Arles de la Photographie with support from the LUMA Foundation, Arles
Idiosyncratic lines of enquiry into particular aspects of studio practice or bodies of work
Stumbling to Utopia
“Why continue with these gestures, with these drawings, these words, in the face of their imminent failure? Because without some idea of utopia, of a rescued world implicit not just in these gestures but in the act of making a drawing, a performance, a speech – without this we feel a gap, a hollow.” WK, 2016
William Kentridge: Creative Machines
William Kentridge puts to use a diversity of ‘creative machines’ in making work. He methodologically rethinks drawing, as an unfinished process, a means of collecting and generating iconography, with the aim of maximizing narrative amplitude that goes beyond the limits of graphic representation by resorting to sound and cinematography.
Listening to the Trees
An anecdotal account of the making of the book “Waiting for the Sibyl” and a consideration of Kentridge’s ongoing series of tree drawings, by book designer Oliver Barstow
9 WORDS and one more
Making art is a uniquely human endeavour and an artist, the maker of art, is someone who distills what they feel and think about the world and expresses this visually. This requires one to read, to see, to listen, to feel, to question and be curious; to know, and yet to doubt; to have humility and to be brave.
All so different from what you expected
Things which are obvious in studio practice, like uncertainty, doubt, provisionality, are not about the COVID pandemic. They are themes I have worked on for many years – but these themes in the outside world have become much more present in these months.
Cursive
Cursive is the third set in a series of small bronze glyphs, following “Lexicon” (2017) and “Paragraph II” (2018). The glyphs started as a collection of ink drawings and paper cut-outs, each on a single page from a dictionary.
