Today is superimposed on yesterday, but the past can no more be erased than what is currently happening: With a highly political installation by William Kentridge, the Schauspielhaus continued its exploration of the African continent at KLANGLICHT 2019. In the 3-channel video and sound installation by the South African artist, symbols of the Chinese Cultural Revolution overlap with the atrocities of the white apartheid regime in South Africa and the history of European colonialism with China’s current economic interests.

KLANGLICHT 2019

William Kentridge is internationally renowned for his expansive installations and is also one of the world’s leading theater and opera directors. With his films, drawings, objects and performances, he transforms traumatic political experiences into poetic allegories.

A project by: William Kentridge
Choreography: Dada Masilo
Composition and arrangement: Philip Miller
Performers: Dada Masilo, Tlale Makhene, Bham Ntabeni, Thato Mothlaolwa, Thabani Edwin Ntuli
Musicians: vocals Bham Ntabeni, Moses Moeta, Joanna Dudley, Ann Masina, tlale Makhene, Thato Motlhaolwa, percussion Tlale Makhene, trombone Dan Selsick, trumpet and spoons Adam Howard, tuba George Fombe, guitar Charles Knighten-Pullen, Stroh violin Waldo Alexander
Curated by: Schauspielhaus Graz

“William Kentridge’s works – whether for the theater or the opera, whether drawings or installations – deal with social conflicts. They are political, create sensual and at the same time complex pictorial spaces and rely on the ambiguity of suggestive images. In the work on display, he deals with the multifaceted entanglements of European and Chinese colonialism on the African continent. With this contribution, Schauspielhaus Graz continues its “Africa” discourse.”

– Iris Laufenberg, Director Schauspielhaus Graz