William Kentridge - The Refusal of Time - Part of 'Black or White'

The Refusal of Time arose in part out of conversations between Kentridge and science historian Peter Galison on matters including the history of the control of world time, relativity, black holes, and string theory. In this work, a small band of brass and percussion plays anarchic music behind a sequence of animations depicting the institutionalisation of time in late-nineteenth-century Paris. Kentridge narrates the story of attempts to standardise the keeping of time: the invention of pressurised clocks, of time zones, of utopian visions of total synchronisation.

William Kentridge

Kentridge (1955, lives and works in Johannesburg) is an artist, printmaker, and animator. His work is largely focused on socio-political themes drawn from the history of apartheid in South Africa. His trademark charcoal drawings, in which he uses erasure in order to create the next image, adds an element of closeness and intimacy to the depicted scene.