William Kentridge
(REPEAT) from the beginning / Da Capo
The Teatro La Fenice has collaborated with the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa for many years, hosting videos by contemporary artists in its stage space. In 2008 it is the turn of William Kentridge (Johannesburg 1955), one of the key protagonists of the international arts scene. This exceptional event will also feature the support of illycaffè, which in this way celebrates its 75th anniversary.
The event will be accompanied by a monograph entitled (REPEAT) from the beginning / Da Capo, published by Charta – Milan, with texts by the curator of the programme, Francesca Pasini, the South African critic Jane Taylor, Angela Vettese, president of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, and William Kentridge.
The event, curated by Francesca Pasini, will take place on three different days in three different venues:
• Il Ritorno di Ulisse, by Claudio Monteverdi, production directed by William Kentridge, revival of production directed by Luc de Wit, with the Ricercar Consort orchestra and the Handspring Puppets Company. Already presented abroad, this is the first performance in Italy. The perfomances are scheduled for Friday 28th and Saturday 29th November at 7pm at the Teatro Malibran venue.
• On Sunday 30th November at 11.30am William Kentridge’s solo exhibition (REPEAT) from the beginning / Da Capo, will open, featuring works created especially for the occasion: drawings, sculptures and an installation of three videos video entitled: Breathe, Return, Dissolve. The exhibition venue is Palazzetto Tito, home of the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in San Barnaba. The exhibition will remain open until 16th January 2009.
• On Sunday 30th November from 1.15pm until 7.45pm, the Teatro La Fenice will host the first showing of the video (REPEAT) from the beginning / Da Capo, created by William Kentridge to be projected onto the safety curtain of the stage. From 9th December, a screening of the work will precede the rehearsals and all the performances of the double bill I pagliacci by Leoncavallo and Von Heute auf Morgen by Schoenberg, with which La Fenice is to close its opera season.
For the Press
The press is invited to the presentation conference of the event on Friday 28th November at 1.30pm at the Teatro La Fenice where there will be a preview screening of the video (Repeat) From the Beginning on the safety curtain of the stage.
To be present: the artist William Kentridge, the Mayor of Venice Massimo Cacciari, the President of Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa Angela Vettese, the curator of the project Francesca Pasini, the President and Managing Director of illycaffè spa Andrea Illy and the Superintendent of Teatro La Fenice Giampaolo Vianello.
After that, around 3pm, there will be a change of venue to Palazzetto Tito, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Dorsoduro 2826, in order to visit the exhibition.
The performance of Il Ritorno di Ulisse requires an invitation, or the purchase of a ticket by contacting www.teatrolafenice.it.
Our thanks to:
illycaffè
Teatro La Fenice
Epson
Fondazione di Venezia
Galleria Lia Rumma Naples-Milan
Marian Goodman New York – Paris
The Goodman Gallery – Johannesburg
Il Ritorno di Ulisse
The entry to the performance of The Return of Ulysses requires an invitation, or the purchase of a ticket by contacting www.teatrolafenice.it.
William Kentridge worked in the theatre for many years as a set designer, actor and director. He first worked with the Handspring Puppet Company in 1992 and in the 1998 they created Il Ritorno di Ulisse, together with the musical group Ricerar Consort headed by Philippe Pierlot. Il Ritorno di Ulisse was presented in 1998 at the KunstenFESTIVALdes Arts in Brussels, at the La Monnaie and Vienna Festwochen, to which it returned in 2004. It then toured the world with performances in New York, Berlin, Zurich, Lisbon and Grahamstown in South Africa and now, at last, it may be seen in Italy.
In his version of the opera by Monteverdi (1567-1643), Kentridge turns Ulysses into a timeless character, who in his journey towards Penelope, passes not only through classical ancient Greece, but also the Venice of Monteverdi and modern day South Africa, focusing on the fragility of the human being.
As Kentridge himself states: “Monteverdi’s version of the opera closely follows Homer’s narration that tells of Ulysses’ return after the Trojan war and his reunion with Penelope. However, the prologue is of key importance, adding to Homer’s tale the themes of human brotherhood, of time, of fortune and of love. And it was this reappraisal of human vulnerability – no longer mere heroism – to be found at the centre of Monteverdi’s version that drew me to this opera, as it constantly underlines this shift between Ulysses’ heroic optimism and the fatalism that makes everything too difficult to face. The prologue puts us in this condition from the outset, and sets the tone for all the images that appear during the story. The creative process lasted about a year, eight months to draw and edit the animation; during the same period, Adrian Kohler of Handspring Puppets designed and created the puppets, while Philippe Pierlot and I worked on the length and the timing of the music, in order that the puppets could move in such a way that would highlight the themes of vulnerability and heroism, the central elements of the production. This preparation period was followed by one of rehearsals with the puppeteers in Johannesburg and Brussels.”
Projection onto the safety curtain of the Teatro La Fenice
The video (REPEAT) from the beginning / Da Capo, will be shown in the hour preceding the beginning of the double bill I pagliacci by Leoncavallo and Von Heute auf Morgen by Schoenberg, with which the Teatro La Fenice closes the new opera season, and it will accompany all the performances to follow.
A continuous intermingling of various figures, including a singer, an orchestra conductor and a horse, whose shadows as they spin round on themselves break up into fragments only to come back together to the single point in which a human figure may be recognised. These seemingly exploding figures evoke the continuous movement of music and it starting over ‘da capo’, as if only in the moment in which every note reaches its own perfection may the figure also regain its own consistency. There is an
immediate link between musical rhythm and the perceptive rhythm of seeing. As William Kentridge writes,”all the sections of the project are about anti -entropy, a gathering out of chaos to order, rather than a reversion from order to a state of dispersal”.
On Friday 28th September (for members of the press only) and Sunday 30th (from 1.15pm to 7.45pm) the Teatro La Fenice will be entirely given over to the screening of the video, which in this case will be accompanied by its own soundtrack, while when it precedes the opera performances, the sound will be provided by the members of the orchestra tuning up. The theatre hall will thus become an extraordinary exhibition venue enveloped by the projector lights and the soundtrack. The work is one of a cycle of projections that form part of a collaboration project between La Fenice and the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, curated by Francesca Pasini since 2004. The Theatre’s first opera season, after its reconstruction following the fire, featured the video by Grazia Toderi Semper Eadem, in 2005; in 2006 it was the turn of the Korean artist Kimsooja entitled To Breathe / Respirare; in 2008 William Kentridge created a video for the purpose: (Repeat) From the Beginning.
illy art collection
“First came the anamorphic cylindrical designs at the Natural History Museum of Florence. I started drawing – says William Kentridge – using the reflective surfaces of the unused air-conditioning conducts. While I was working on the coffee cups, I was also working on a series of designs and an anamorphic film entitled What Will Come (Has Already Come). One of the most striking characteristics of the anamorphic drawings is that, even through the initial drawing does not move (in this case the saucer), it changes radically in the mirror (in this case the coffee cup) on the basis of the nearness of the mirror and the angle of vision. And so, even though it is static, the design becomes a dynamic image while you drink your coffee. The principle behind it is to design while looking in the mirror, not at the surface being designed”.
The six coffee cups and six cappuccino cups designed by the artist for the illy art collection, which complete the Venetian tribute to Kentridge, will be displayed at Palazzetto Tito as well as at the Teatro La Fenice.
The illy art collections are a series of coffee cups designed by artists which the Trieste company has produced since 1992, and constitute one of the clearest expressions of the relationship that illycaffè has established with contemporary art. Some of the most well-known exponents of the international arts scene as well as emerging young artists have turned an everyday object such as the coffee cup – in this case reinvented by the architect and designer Matteo Thun – into a cult object: Michelangelo Pistoletto and Marina Abramovic, Jeff Koons and Bob Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist and Julian Schnabel are just a few of the great names that have contributed to this project.
Biography
William Kentridge (Johannesburg, 1955)
Since his participation in Documenta X in Kassel in 1997, solo shows of Kentridge's work have been shown in many museums and galleries around the world, starting with the MCA San Diego (1998), and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1999). In 1998 a survey exhibition of his work was hosted by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, continuing to museums in throughout Europe during 1998/1999. 2001 saw the launch of a substantial survey show of Kentridge’s work in Washington, traveling thereafter to cities in the US and South Africa. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev curated a new retrospective exhibition of his work for the Castello di Rivoli in Turin in January 2004, which went on to museums in Europe, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
The shadow oratorio Confessions of Zeno was commissioned for Documenta XI in 2002. The installation 7 Fragments for Georges Méliès, Day for Night and Journey to the Moon was presented at the 2005 Venice Biennale. April 2005 saw the premiere of a production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) at the Théâtre de La Monnaie in Brussels, with William Kentridge directing and René Jacobs as conductor, touring to cities including New York, Naples, and Johannesburg. In October 2005, the Deutsche Bank Guggenheim in Berlin presented Black Box / Chambre Noire, a miniature theatre piece with mechanized puppets, projection and original music by Philip Miller.
William Kentridge received the Carnegie Medal for the Carnegie International 1999/2000; the Goslar Kaisserring in 2003; and the Oskar Kokoschka Award (2008). He has received honorary doctorates from a number of universities internationally.Recent work includes Telegrams from the Nose, a collaborative performance with composer Francois Sarhan; and for the Sydney Biennale of 2008, both
I am not me, the horse is not mine, a solo lecture/performance piece, and an installation of the same title, comprising eight film fragments. Among Kentridge’s current projects is work towards a production of Shostakovich’s opera The Nose, to premier at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, in March 2010.
