Fragments of modernity, shadows of the gothic : questions of representation and perception in William Kentridge's I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008)

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Contemporary South African artist William Kentridge's experimentation with the visual strategies of European modernism and nineteenth-century optical devices, particularly the fragmented figure and shadow perception, has been well documented in contemporary cultural discourse. It is, however, something for which he is often criticized. In this dissertation I will demonstrate that Kentridge's enduring interest in European modernism and the processes of human perception are in fact inextricably linked. I will further argue that the significance of this connection resides in that they are both critical visual strategies for exploring the fragmented nature of a postmodern postcolonial subjectivity in a South African contemporary cultural context. Kentridge's concern with the subjective nature of the construction of knowledge, of the space between seeing and knowing, memory and reality, is a central motif in his art practice and is understood to be a personal attempt to reconcile his present with the past, South Africa's colonial history with Western history and modernism with postmodernism.Shaped by theories of altermodernity, neomodern anthropology, and the relationship between the observer and 'the gaze' in contemporary discourse, my dissertation will thus also argue that Kentridge's interrogation of the fragmented nature of human subjectivity could be regarded as being ethnographic and Gothic in nature. His multi-channel video installation, I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008), will provide the key visual text for my argument, for it is in this artwork that the inseparability of these concerns are best exemplified, particularly in his experimentation with fragmentation, the Russian avant-garde and shadows. I conclude this research with a discussion of my own creative work, which is a re-imagining and critical investigation of my maternal grandfather's archive of late eighteenth-century family silhouette portraits. As such, I interrogate notions of subjectivity, human perception and an 'altermodern' anthropological quest through a personal lens, in the context of the broader concerns raised by Kentridge's work.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University