A lecture performance by Johannesburg-based artist William Kentridge.
Asia Art Archive presents Peripheral Thinking by William Kentridge, a new lecture performance stemming from Notes Towards a Model Opera, his concurrent solo touring exhibition organised by Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, which will also travel to Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul.
The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) in Wan Chai provides the backdrop for Kentridge, whose hour-long performance uses sounds and images to point to socialist values and utopian ideals both past and present. Like much of his other work, Kentridge interplays drawing, animation, performance, spoken word, and film to transform sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories.
Staged as a public lecture, Periperhal Thinking also allows a look into the artist's working process. Kentridge’s self-conscious approach to art-making extends from the studio to the proverbial 'artist talk' as forms unto themselves. By taking these as models to look at larger questions of how human knowledge and agency take shape, Kentridge asks himself and the audience what possibilities exist in 'learning from the edges'.
William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg) lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. He studied at the University of the Witwatersrand and Johannesburg Art Foundation in Johannesburg, L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, and was a founding member of the Free Filmmakers Co-operative. Recent international exhibitions and biennales include: Mobile M+, Hong Kong (2015); dOCUMENTA, Kassel (2012, 2002); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012); Tate Modern, London (2012); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2010); Musée du Louvre, Paris (2010); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010, 1999); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2009); Mori Art Museum, Japan (2006); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2002); Kwangju Biennial, Korea (2000); and Shanghai Biennial, China (2000). The work of William Kentridge has been featured in countless publications and in 2011- 2012, he was awarded the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship in Poetry at Harvard University.
Presented by Asia Art Archive in collaboration with Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing
Venue Partner
Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA)
Supported by
Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong
National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul