THE REFUSAL OF TIME : WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

The Refusal of Time is an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with installation which called as breathing machine or elephant, five channel video with sound by William Kentridge who is South African artist. The entire show is about 30 minutes length. This is collaboration work with Peter Galison, Catherine Meyburgh, and Philip Mille.

The first thing that you will notice is that there is a machine at the center of the room. The light is pretty dark, so it is little bit hard to see it, but you can still see the movement and details of this breathing machine. There are five video is played on three side of the wall. There are two video for each side wall, and one for center wall. Chairs are not movable. They are not organized in line. The direction of each chairs are different. Soon or later, people who walked in that room realize that the sound is coming out from the cone shaped speaker.

If I try to think about the story logically, it is really hard. I don't think think logical about this exhibition is not necessary. What matters is that the mood and the atmosphere that the installation brings. It looks like Kentridge is trying to study time, and all those group of African people are those who trying to make time. This might not be Kentridge intention, but to me the fact that people in the video are Black makes the video more interesting and powerful, because I remember that I read an article which said that our first man kinds are Black. Those people remind me of this article, but also helped me to understand the video in my way. I think those people are either from far future when every time is broken, so they are trying to re-build it, or from far past before time was built. 

NON LINEAR

MEMENTO

Leonard can't remember long-term memory. The only thing that he knows is that his wife was murdered after raped by the killer. He tries to find this killer by getting tattoo about what he find out about the killer. He took picture and left some note to recognize people. The time line of this video is non-linear. It goes backwards. This kind of sequence remind me the book "My Man" This is a Japanese novel, and it has same sequence with Memento. This is about father and daughter(actually there is more than that..), and it starts from awkward moment of stepfather and daughter at the coffee shop, and the story end with when they first met. There is another movie called Wicker Park, this has similar aspect from Memento. The sequence just does not go back. The basic sequence is chronological sequence, but it is mixed with past a lot. Basically, the story is telling us that what you see, and what you experience is not everything, and even truth. What you remember is simply just your perspective, if you heard same story from another person, the story will toward to totally different direction. This is similar theme that people can find from Memento.

 It starts from present, and move towards to past. The characteristic of this kind of sequence is that makes people to assume the past by each 'present', but at the end people will realize that what we see now can not tell everything what happened in the past, maybe even truth, but also if we see our past as a third person, we might not recognize them as our past. 

"CIRCULAR RUINS" & "THE LIBRARY OF BABEL"

Circular Ruins

At first, it was hard to understand, because I was not sure which part is dream and which part is reality. However, at the end the author made my concern useless, because he stated that even reality that the man had, it is just another dream of somebody else. This remind me what I used to think. I used to imagine that what if the reality that I am having is another person's dream? Is the one that dreaming is me or someone else? At that moment, I felt I am being separated from my surrounding.

The Library of Babel

Babel is a building that existed years and years ago. The description of this building is featured on Bible. The author, Jorge Luis Borges, borrow this into the world that he created. In the library of Babel, there are uncountable number of books, and built in hexagon shaped rooms. All the people in there, the were eager to find "truth". This is just my assumption, maybe Borges made this library and made people to find it, because there are "truth" as many as books, but when group of people try to find something, they just simply assume that it will be just 'one'. This will make impossible to people to find "truth" 

FICTIONAL DOCUMENTARY

STATEMENT

 Our fictional documentary  will be about a song and an artist. A song on YouTube got really popular. However, no one knows who is the artist. Generally, the basic story line is finding this  guy. We got our inspiration from a movie called "Searching for the Sugar man." This movie is a real documentary about searching for an artist who is really famous in South Africa, but sold 10 albums in United States. 

STORY BOARD

1.Opening scene - Night sight of Manhattan
2.You-tube video starts to play the song. - original song title: Latch by Sam Smith/ still-image only
3.Listening the song.
4.Typing
5. Video Screen shot of twitting.
6. Captured Social media image pop-up.
7. Reporter is reporting about the song.
8.Billboard chart
9.Who is this guy??
10.Interview[1] expert
11.Investigating scene
12.Interview[2] tattooist
13. Trying to catch a taxi
14~16. Walk towards to the guy.
17. Focus on his tattoo on his hand.

EXIT THROUGH GIFT SHOP

Banksy is trying to say through this "documentary", what is moral or not, and what is art. It is hard to define what is believable and which was not, because 'believable' and 'truth' are different, and in this documentary, they are conflicting with each other a lot. Art is a term that when something can evoke or contain some meaning to somebody. It could be a point of view and expression of the artist, or it could be something that the artist did not mean anything or something else, but audiences can get something from the artists' work. At the end of the documentary, Shepard Fairey said, "I think even when you have the best intention; sometimes things can be go awry." This is a comment about how does he feel about being partially responsible for creating Mr. Brainwash. This comment overlaps on entire art industry. Even though artist intention is pure, the art become commercialized. 

SOUND

This is sound collage of all the sound that collected from Washington Park. Weather was so nice that I felt relaxed even though I had bunch of stuffs to do. I want to create a sound piece that can represent that nice weather, but the sound turns out a bit dark. This could mean even though I felt relaxed, my unconscious mind was nervous. I want this sound to sound like from radio, so I add noise, or adjust their speed.