Two years ago I saw this installation "More Sweetly Play the Dance" by William Kentridge at the Eye Museum in Amsterdam. I possibly have written about this idea (for the lack of a better word) of endless procession in life. A few weeks ago in Paris, my friend insisted on going to Fondation Louis Vuitton for this exhibition of African artists. There, unexpectedly, I saw another installation "Notes towards a Model Opera" by him, which brilliantly combines elements with reference to the cultural revolution with the Chinese version of the L'Internationale as the theme music. We sat there for a long time, contemplating on the past that we did not live and the future that we do not yet know. Back to the topic of understanding art - I am never sure that I understand what the artist intends to impart. That's also the beauty of art - you take what you need, you see what you want to see. Then I started reading this book Six Drawing Lessons by William Kentridge (Norton lectures). It could be about drawing but also could be about everything. Let me just share a few paragraphs.
From this, Plato tells us, comes the ethical imperative of the philosopher. The man who has seen the light and apprehended the understanding that follows from it has a duty to return to the cave, to unshackle those in darkness, and to bring them up from the cave into the light. If necessary, this must be done with force. The nexus of enlightenment, emancipation, and violence emerges. Our agenda has been set. Mozart wrote The Magic Flute in 1791, when an optimism and clear belief in Enlightenment were possible. Such an optimism is no longer available. It is not that every act of violence has had its public relations, its brochures, its paintings and murals of a better life. But rather, and more difficult to apprehend, is that every act of enlightenment, all the missions to save souls, all the best impulses, are so dogged by the weight of what follows them: their shadow, the violence that has accompanied enlightenment. Caught with the question of what place these elements of the spirit of the mind of ideals can have today, or whether - and this seems impossible to accept - that every impulse for good, for generosity, for emancipation, is flawed, an impotent structure floating above a world of realpolitik and violence, takeovers and mergers. The contradiction continues, of a continent being assessed from outside itself for what it is, as if the long view, in which the entire continent can fit onto a single page of a map, in which all its differences can be obliterated in a single thought, continues today. It is unclear what makes the continent. Genetics? History? Tradition? And whether talking of a continent makes any sense, except as the locus, the provocation, for the discussion of African-ness itself. Knowing that when we put up a sign or a label - this event happened in this place, this monument is erected to the memory of - we admit defeat. We hand the responsibility of memory to the sign, to the object. It becomes a canned memory, like canned laughter on a TV show, which laughs on our behalf, it remembers on our behalf, it does the work for us. We are let off the hook. I feel like my own words are inadequate at this point. Next time.
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