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Jana Peel
Welcome to Chanel Connects, the Venice Biennale edition.
William Kentridge
It's important to be free. So who was the fool who didn't recognize it all that time ago?
Penny Martin
I think it is seduction. Oh, absolutely. Just another woman trying to survive.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
So who of them is lying?
Penny Martin
I wish that were the case. Well, let's face the terror of the new work then. And this is what art is so good at. I don't. Do you prepare? No, no, no.
Jana Peel
In this season of Chanel Connects, we've taken up residence in Italy to go to the center of the art world. Listen in to the artists, curators, thinkers and makers behind the Venice Biennale, the world's most important exhibition of contemporary art. Now in its 60th edition. Each of our guests is focused on what matters most and what happens next. I'm Jana Peel, global head of arts and culture at Chanel. Thank you for connecting with us.
William Kentridge
Could you tell where my head was at when you found me? Me? You went to. Hello.
Jana Peel
In the words of poet Joseph Brodsky, Venice is eternity itself. In this episode, we connect with two friends and veterans of the Biennale. South African artist William Kentridge and free thinking curator Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev. As a storm swept in across the lagoon in Venice, they hunkered down for a conversation with editor, writer and curator Penny Martin. Here she is to set the scene.
Penny Martin
We're sitting here in a grand hall inlaid with every, every kind of marble and decorated with this cycle of paintings depicting the passage of the sun across the sky by Jacopo Guarana. Why don't we start by you telling me when and how it was that the two of you met? It was a long time ago, actually.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
In Italy, in Umbria, at a residency. William was, I guess, a young emerging artist and I was a young emerging curator. And it was in a castle and I had a small baby, a three or four month old baby in my arms and visited your studio and was blown over. And we've been doing things ever since.
William Kentridge
Yes, we started off with one small project that Carolyn had. I had one piece on it and then she had another project and had a whole room to do a piece in. And then she wrote the book on the next exhibition and then we did a whole large exhibition together. At which point Carolyn said, well, you understand, now we've stopped working together. You know, you're going to have a different curator, I'm going to work with different artists. The same curators and artists can't get on. I thought she was very cavalier in the ease with which she said, that. But here we are maybe another 20 years later and another five or six projects down the line, with more coming. It's very particular to find a. You can think of a curator, someone who chooses the work and puts it up on the wall, but to understand a great curator who is also a provoker of the artist, not simply a receiver of finished work, but also a way of reinterpreting it and showing the artist things they hadn't seen in their own work before.
Penny Martin
I wonder what it was, now that you look back about each other, that made you want to work together.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
I think we share some things, and it is a form of love and esteem for change, for things that are not certain and fixed and finished and complete. I don't always agree with myself. I'll say something and then I'll say something else.
William Kentridge
And then.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
And William, his work with erasure and drawing and redrawing, it broke open this idea of the modernist autonomous artwork, and I found that a relief. So I think we share that. No. What would you say?
William Kentridge
Yes, I mean, I think in very broad terms, you can either see the world as a series of facts or fixed things, or you can see all of those fixed things as simply being part of a process. So the table we're sitting at right here. Yes, There's a fact here's a wooden table in front of us. But you can also think of this as part of a very monotonous process. This table is simply a moment between when this is simply planks, which were a tree, and when this table will become firewood and smoke and ashes. So I think it's that in the most immediate sense, as well as in broader ways of understanding, that works will change, that relationships between works will change.
Penny Martin
You're perhaps describing a kind of sparring partner, almost where you can anticipate.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
I don't know what sparring means.
William Kentridge
From boxing, fencing. Ah, fencing.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Or boxing fencing.
William Kentridge
Someone that you.
Penny Martin
Ah, moving forward, moving back, moving forward, finding the.
William Kentridge
I think that's right.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Really?
William Kentridge
Yes, because you would suggest a topic and I would say, well, I've got this piece that fits your topic perfectly. So you would make a movement. I would reply, and you would say, yes, I know that's perfect, but it's not right. Let's do something different.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Maybe, but I don't see any violence in that. I mean, fencing sounds right.
William Kentridge
I feel that violence. When you say, oh. I say, here's a perfect piece for you, and you say, yes, it's perfect, but it's wrong.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Do I do that?
William Kentridge
Yes, you do. Oh, wow, you do, you do, you do.
Penny Martin
So that brings me to the obvious next question, which is, do you ever have a disagreement in this overall harmonious relationship?
William Kentridge
Yes, we do. Of course we do. We do. Almost every idea that Carolyn had for the installation here, I resisted. I'd had in my head an image of a big screen, a projection, cinema seats, and trying to squash a whole cinema into a tiny room. And Carolyn said, oh, no, I think we should rather have small screens and small chairs and keep it intimate rather than pretend that it's huge. And she said, of course. That's the way you made them. You made them to be seen as domestic things on an iPad or your phone or your television screen, the way you would stream watch your streaming service. So then my response is not, oh, let me defend my position to the end, but it's almost always, God, how stupid I am. And of course, she's right. And if only I'd thought of that, then it would have been my idea. But it's not.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
But it is. It can be, because my thinking always comes from your work. When I understood and saw the works, and they represent how subjectivity is constructed in a digital age. It's all about fragments and collage and rapid shifts from one email or WhatsApp or Instagram to another. And that condition of selfhood where you turn on your phone and you want to do one thing, but you end up doing three others, and then you have a hard time remembering what you wanted to do on the phone in the first place, that comes out in the works in the way that the smooth digital editing of William's doppelganger and second self is in. And yet the rough cuts between one small scene and another. So you feel the era that we are in now, the idea to show the work on a small phone as well as on a laptop, as well as on flat screens, doesn't come from another place. It comes from the structure and deep meaning in the works. So I don't find that as adversarial at all.
William Kentridge
No, no, it's not as I find that as trying to understand. Yes, but then what it means is that you're one step ahead of me understanding what the work is. But almost every time I've done work that's been interesting, other people have shown me things that I was trying to deny in the work. So, for example, with the animated films, where there's an erasure, the charcoal is never perfectly erased. You have a gray smudge on the paper. And when I started, I would apologise I would say, well, I'm sorry, I'm trying to get a better eraser. I'm trying to get better paper, different charcoal, so I can get a perfect erasure so your frames don't have this messy trail. And it took other people outside of me to say to stop complaining about your eraser in the paper. In fact, that's the interesting thing seems now obvious. So who was the fool who didn't recognize it all that time ago, which was me doing it but not seeing what was being done.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
But one can never understand in the time itself, of experience in general, in life.
William Kentridge
Yeah, but it's one, I mean, that feels. I didn't think, oh, what a good idea. Let's leave the trail. Let's show history. Let's show memory. It was always, God, how stupid I was not to have realized that. So I think there's a way in which the work needs to know more than the artist knows about the work. Otherwise, if you know everything, there's no real point in doing it. And it's very strong to have someone next to it who's also sensitive to the things that are there that the person making it doesn't see.
Penny Martin
Well, indeed. And for all that friendly collaborative agreement, you have said in the past that you feel that the most important person a curator serves, the word that you used is the artist. So more so than the market, more than the gallery, more than the viewer.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Yes, absolutely. You see, art doesn't last only for the duration of a candle burning. It lasts forever. So in the long run, it's the painting by Caravaggio that lasts. It's not anything else. So the art system, what we call the art system, is very transient. And whenever I'm working, I'm constructing the past for the future. I'm never in our time at a dinner party, never. I'm always seeing it as from 200 years from now. So to do that, you have to serve the artist.
Penny Martin
In the synopsis of your relationship that you gave just at the start, you took us on a time traveling quick picture of your lives, your professional lives together. I think you mentioned a sort of moment of rupture where you tried it differently with another. You said, oh, it's time to have another curator. Let's change things up a bit.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
No, you know, that was a complete misunderstanding. This is actually the first time I'm going to say what I meant by that, William. I didn't mean I wasn't interested in your work anymore. I thought now you've become famous, you will be Working with so many other curators. I mustn't be on your back. It actually had to do with serving the artist. I wanted to let him go. It's like a child. You can't just be there always. It would oppress the work. The work has to be seen by different eyes, work with different curators. And in fact, that's what happened. That's exactly what happened. And now we're a little older and we can relax and do things together again. But William always told me, like you were being abandoned in a relationship or something.
William Kentridge
Absolutely. I read it as Carolyn saying, okay, we've done it. Now I turn my attention to this next younger batch of artists coming up. And in fact, I mean, Carolyn is fantastic viewer of younger artists work and always has had an interest, always had an interest in seeing what new people are thinking. And even in this project, the way of shaping it is also saying the era we are in is an era of Instagram, of TikTok, of short digital media. And these are slow, long films compared to that. You can't forget that that's the world that we're in, which I do forget. I'm in the studio. It's the same studio for 40 years. I keep working away at it in the hope that people outside of the studio, when you asked about the audience, the only way to work is to work in a way that feels best, that the work feels alive for me and the people working with me around me in the hope that it will also interest people outside. But if you start thinking on behalf of an audience while making the work for me, it becomes impossible because you always know the audience is always different from what you expect. They know more and they know less than you predict. And then you start. There's a kind of inherent patronage and thinking, well, I know more than an audience so I can show them what they need to think. They're always a surprise. So I think that's the terror of a new body of work coming into the world. Yes, it seems okay. It's intrigued me for the years of making it, but will it have anything to say to people outside of the studio?
Penny Martin
Well, let's face the terror of the new work then. You're here in Venice presenting your exhibition center. Self Portrait is a Coffee Pot, which has been curated by Carolyn. Introduce us to the show. Yes, imagine we're walking in there.
William Kentridge
It is an exhibition, but I think of it more as an installation of a series of films, the films. There are nine films, nine half hour films that make up Self Portrait as A coffee pot. And they were made to be shown on a kind of a streaming system. And so that, in fact, is one of the ways it will be seen. It will be streamed from the middle of the year in exactly that format. The films are all shot in the studio, in one studio, in my Johannesburg studio. And they're about the studio as a place of making. Physical making, drawing, sculpting, tearing paper, physical making, but also a metaphoric space of making meaning. And the form of it is largely the way we have a conversation. But it was made during COVID lockdown. So the conversation is always with myself in the film. I'd film half the conversation where I'm sitting now and try to remember what I'd said. And then move around the table and sit where you're sitting now, and then fill in the gaps and talk back to myself while trying to remember, what did he say after that? And that's kind of the game of it.
Penny Martin
I read a quote where you called it a reflection on what might happen in the brain and in the studio of the artist today.
William Kentridge
What do you mean literally thinking of a studio as an enlarged head? So I mean very literally, when you're thinking of different thoughts, all the different things that come into your head, an image, a memory, a dream, they sit in different physical areas of your brain. I'm not a neurologist, an anatomist, but we know they go from an unconscious into the frontal cortex. So you can hang onto conscious thoughts and your optical sight is somewhere back in there. And. And so there is a physical movement of neurons and of electrical impulses where a thought that's been sitting back here comes in here to consider it, and it's altered by a thought that comes. So there's a physical movement, and on the studio it's like that. It's just instead of 5 centimeters, it's 5 meters or 12 meters. And instead of just thoughts, there are pieces of paper on the wall in the studio. And you construct an image the way you would construct a thought from these different fragments being torn up and brought back together. So it's a very literal description of the head as an enlarged studio. And an exhibition is a kind of an enlarged or contracted studio also.
Penny Martin
And the studio has been replicated aspects of it at the space where the show takes place.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Absolutely. So the experience of the viewer is of being both inside the screen and outside the screen. Because you're in the same space where the film was made. It's inside and out. It's very much like a game that's the experience that you can do in an exhibition that you can't do when you're just watching a film or in a film festival. Yeah.
Penny Martin
You described the back and forth until you hit upon the agreed moment where you felt that you both trusted in the idea and each other to work on it. What was exciting to you, Carolyn? What made you want to do it?
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Ah, well, first, I had just retired from my directorship at the Castelli di Rivoli, so Congratulations. Thank you so much. The last thing I wanted to do was curate another show immediately. But you don't say no to William Kentridge if he calls number one. I mean, I saw the works and they're extraordinary. You know, the most radical things are funny and William is really funny and the works are funny. They speak about very serious, very, very serious things. An awareness of what happens in the world is always present in the background. Ethical questions always present. But he lightens it with a kind of joy that makes it possible to even think of certain words.
William Kentridge
I think that the idea of play, which you mentioned earlier, being able to play is important because the way the films are made, they're not made with a script. There's no script written in advance. There's no shooting script. There's no list of scenes first f. I don't know what it is that we're going to do. I think, okay, I'm starting the episode well, to stop having to think about it. I'll just draw a landscape in the hope that in those hours of making the drawing ideas can percolate. And usually they are. There's that sense of ongoing. One could call it a very slow improvisation, a four year improvisation which always playful or sometimes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because when I tried to write, there was somewhere I tried to write serious texts and they were unlistenable to. They sounded so pious, they sounded so pompous. So talking down to everyone that some of them were filmed and the ones that were filmed all ended on the editing floor. And the things that were quick throwaways and things like. Are mostly the things that stand stayed in the process. Didn't mean it was quick to do because the animation and the drawing is slow however you do it.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
But the fun, I mean, why you like Schwitter's ursonate and you're talking about the soldiers from Africa in First World War.
William Kentridge
This is this great poem of words without meaning that he wrote the time of the First World War and the years afterwards. It goes on like that for 20 minutes and it was about language ceasing to mean anything. That's when those massacres and those deaths become possible. So there is a connection between the absurd and language falling apart and a violence. But to do that, you have to be open to what that is that Schwitters and the other Dados were doing. The likeness of that. So it's a kind of a serious lightness or a light seriousness.
Penny Martin
The specificity of Venice interests me with regards to this. That you participated in the Biennale before, what meaning does it have? Why come all the way here to.
William Kentridge
Do a collateral project in this craziness of this opening week? A chance to reconnect and to see many, many people from art worlds and museums. And that, for me, is one of the pleasures. And also to, you know, to have one's work together with both younger artists, but also with the astonishing work that are here in Venice, that have so shaped on us. A Tiepolo ceiling, which, even though you think, okay, I'm not making paintings like Tiepolo, I don't use those beautiful colors, but that thing somehow. And it would be hard to put my finger on what it is that makes me come back and look at that ceiling every time I'm in.
Penny Martin
I mean, Venice, you mentioned Tiepolo ceilings. But I believe that there's a go to church for you here that you never missed.
William Kentridge
There's the Church of the Rosary, Santa Maria della Rosario. And in my head I see this Tiepolo painting being the full size of the nave. In fact, each time I go, I'm surprised. It's quite a small section. But what I loved was that there used to be, and I think there still is, a mirror at an angle on wheels that you could take and push down the nave, and then you could shrink. That whole ceiling would come down into the size of the mirror in front of you. And I took this idea of the ceiling in the mirror. I made a project once which was a projection on a ceiling like that, where we gave everybody a mirror. So you could either look up, crane your neck and look up to see the projection, or you could look into a mirror, and then the projection came. It made me understand then what that was like. It was a kind of metaphor of the cloud and the Internet, where everybody has their own little device, but it's connected to some bigger imagined image of it. Here you make that imagined image physical. There is the projection on the ceiling. And then, of course, if you have writing the right way around to read it, you need to look up at the ceiling. But if we make the writing, the text, a mirror image on the ceiling. Suddenly everybody turns around and reads their phone, reads the mirror. So that sense of being able to make people so aware of that journey from their private devices. So even though it's about Tiepolo and the ceiling centuries ago, it becomes a metaphoric way of thinking about what that relation is to huge images. And of course, the phone is just a kind of. In this case or the mirror is like an enlarged eye.
Penny Martin
Caroline, can you help us see William's work through the visiting public? In Venice's Eyes, you're talking about perennial themes and you're talking about things that were important to you from the beginning and still are important to you. But what do you think they see that has changed, and what do you think they see that has developed or moved on?
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
My impression, talking with many of the younger artists and curators in town, is that they're fascinated, to be honest, by how we do things from another generation. I mean, we are 20th century people. William is and I am. We're still living in the 21st century, but we were formed, our prime time was 20th century and it was pre Internet. And I think they're fascinated by the ability that William has to invent very simple, what I call inverted commas, poor, poor forms of image production. He just figures things out, like with a mirror, with a piece of paper, with something at a very, very low cost. He will invent new ways of image production. And young people don't really feel that they can. I mean, they're looking for the next software, you know, and that has something to do also with the installation. I mean, there's a lot of digital art now and painting, traditional media, very traditional media going on, because the mind body divide that Descartes had done at the beginning of modernity, let's say, had been healed. And we had understood that the medium is the message. And it was very, very important to us in the late 20th century, somehow, that with the screen, with online life, it's as if there's that split again. So I think they see us as dinosaurs that have something to say that might help to reach some better future. I think that's how they see us, and with benevolence towards us.
Penny Martin
For all that. You say that they're still tuning in on Instagram and about to watch you on Mubi. So maybe you have the best of both worlds.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Maybe. What do you think?
William Kentridge
I suppose I'm 20th century, completely in the sense of deeply analog, even if things are filmed on a digital camera and they're edited digitally. And there's a lot of, in fact, very sophisticated digital editing in these seemingly very simple films. The heart of them is the movement of the hand, the tearing, the making, the gluing, the ink, the splash of ink, the line of charcoal. So there's a. And it's very clear how things are made. It's very obvious in that kind of very simple technique. So there's a kind of an encouragement towards agency to people saying, yes, you can do it. I'm not hiding my technique to show you'll never do this. It's to say, of course one can. And so I think that's sometimes a support to artists and also to talk about the blankness. Sometimes when you can't get something going and you have to rely on the work. That's also often a comfort and an encouragement to people who are in that position of wanting to make something but not knowing how to get that underway.
Penny Martin
Well, for two people that describe themselves so wedded to the analogue, you seem uncommonly focused on the future. Which neatly brings us to the one question we're asking all our guests on Chanel Connects, which is, what are you most excited about for the future of art?
William Kentridge
I mean, I know I will see many things by many different artists that are enormously exciting. For me, the test of an exhibition is you go in, it makes you want to be back in your studio. So I'm sure there will be a lot of that. But in terms of thinking of the future of art, it's not the way I work. It's, you know, what is either the next project I'm working on, what is the next collaboration, or what is the drawing?
Penny Martin
Answer that, then what is your next project?
William Kentridge
The next project is, in fact, a theatrical project, kind of chamber opera, about a ship's journey from Marseille to Martinique in 1941, in which care and the ferryman of the dead can call up everyone he wants to put onto that ship Duet between Josephine Bonaparte and Josephine Baker, Frantz Fanon and Emmy Cesaire, Andre Breton. So it's also. And so the excitement is the work with the collaborators, with the musicians, the dancers, the actors, who, together with me, will construct the whole piece.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
It's quite normal that an artist would not be thinking about what other artists of the future will do. I think if there isn't that focus on one's own work, it's not an artist. So, yes, me. Well, I have a feeling really big changes, because I think most of the art world doesn't understand that they are A traditional art world, they are part of a past, like when, you know, there was just about to be the French Revolution and there was the aristocracy that was surprised and thinking that a certain number of things were very bad taste. For example, reading on a weekly magazine a chapter of something, and then that becomes the novel, you know, it becomes Dostoevsky a century later. And similarly in art, I think when there is a new social class emerging, there is also a different concept of art emerging. And now we're in the shift to the digital world, and there's a very, very different universe of wealth with different kinds of zeros, totally different. And there are artists that are liked and understood by those people. And now we're in the break. So you have the traditional art world and the digital art world. But I believe that an artist like Beeple, Mike Winkelman, whom I thought was an algorithm, when he sold his everydays for whatever, how many millions through Christie's, I wanted to check. You know, I thought, that's a machine. That's not a person. So I called someone at Christie's and said, I want to speak now. When you've done Documenta, you can kind of speak with anybody. So the next day I had the call, and I realized not only was he not a machine, he was also extremely intelligent and absorbing like mad. So he taught me digital things, and I taught him art history, including William Kentridge. And I think that there's a tremendous presumption in the art world when they say, oh, the NFTs are over. You know, they're not worth anything anymore. First they were worthless because they were only about money, and now they're worthless because they're not worth anything in money.
Penny Martin
So.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
So who of them is lying? We have not come to terms with that yet. So the question is, what is the material of the digital age? That's the question that people are not thinking about.
Penny Martin
Fascinating place to stop. Thank you very much, Carolyn and William.
William Kentridge
Thank you.
Carolyn Kristof Bakargiev
Thank you. Thank you.
Penny Martin
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Jana Peel
Thank you to William and Carolyn and to Penny Martin for hosting this fascinating conversation. William mentioned his love for the Tiepolo ceiling in the Church of the Rosary. Perhaps in a dream world, he'd even want to take it with him. We asked some influential Biennale attendees to let their imaginations run wild. If you had a chisel, a hammer, and immunity from arrest, what would you take home from Venice and why?
Penny Martin
I would definitely keep a lion from the Venice because I'm a Leo and I really love the lions across the city. And I think these Sculptures are just very, very beautiful. The lion would be made out of stone, like a beautiful giant lion.
Jana Peel
There's this part of Venice in the northern part of the island that is called the ghetto, where on one of the buildings there is this man with a Ottoman turban. And I think it's a testament of Venice's connection with the world and its history of trade and travel. And I would love to take it with me next time.
Penny Martin
Any incredible plastered ceiling, as long as.
Jana Peel
Your ceilings are this tall and so.
Penny Martin
You can add the accoutrement to your very tall ceiling.
Jana Peel
Tapestry. Maybe some tapestry pieces.
William Kentridge
I feel like with the kind of current debates that are going on, I feel like we should leave things where they are. So, like, I would just. I would just go home with my luggage.
Penny Martin
I am taking Titian.
Jana Peel
There is no need for contemporary art.
Penny Martin
When you can have Titian. Titian, Tishan. Titian. Titian, Italian artist.
William Kentridge
Yeah.
Penny Martin
Oh, Titian. Yeah.
Jana Peel
For me, it would have to be the Carlos Scarpa designed floor in the Olivetti showroom on the Piazza San Marco. The amazing mosaic pattern is made from materials including marble and glass arranged in these amazing geometric shapes. I feel it so reflects Scarpa's innovative approach to architecture and interior design. And a little known fact is that that floor actually inspired the incredible new foyer of the National Portrait Gallery as redesigned by Jamie Faubert in Trafalgar Square last year. Thank you so much to all of our contributors who joined us in Venice for the 60th edition of the Biennale. Thank you for listening to Chanel Connects, the Venice Biennale edition. Now, the number five is very important in the house of Chanel, so please consider giving us five stars on whatever platform. You're listening to us. Please follow the show so you don't miss an episode. For more on filmmaking, listen back to the Chanel Connects archive where you'll find conversations between Kehinda Wiley and Misan Herman, Barry Jenkins and Isaac Julian, Margaret Qualley and Savannah Leaf. For those episodes and more, just head to chanel.com next time on Chanel Connects, we explore the art of the curator with with two leading figures in the field, Courtney Martin and Simone Castell. Together they discussed the role of art in modern society, approaching exhibitions with an open mind and what they would do if they were to curate the so called Olympics of the art world.
Penny Martin
We could do it together. We would do it together. I would do it together.
William Kentridge
Stronger together.
Penny Martin
Yes, I would. Absolutely. You know what, I'm not even being funny about this. I would absolutely curate anything with you. You should shake on that. Shall we?
Jana Peel
This one's really not to be missed. See you next week.
CHANEL Connects: The Sparring Partners – William Kentridge and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
Release Date: July 30, 2024
In the vibrant ambiance of La Pausa, CHANEL’s flagship arts and culture podcast, "CHANEL Connects," Season 5 delves deep into the dynamic relationship between South African artist William Kentridge and esteemed curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Hosted by Jana Peel and featuring insightful moderation by Penny Martin, the episode titled "The Sparring Partners" offers a rich exploration of their collaborative journey, creative philosophies, and visions for the future of art.
Timestamp: [00:04] – [01:01]
Jana Peel sets the stage for this special Venice Biennale edition of CHANEL Connects, highlighting the podcast's new residence in Italy to immerse listeners in the heart of the art world. The 60th edition of the Venice Biennale serves as the perfect backdrop for conversations with leading visionaries shaping contemporary art.
Timestamp: [02:05] – [03:36]
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev recalls meeting William Kentridge in Umbria during a residency at a castle, where their paths crossed unexpectedly with Carolyn balancing a young child. This serendipitous encounter blossomed into a long-term collaboration marked by mutual respect and creative synergy.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev:
"I visited your studio and was blown over. And we've been doing things ever since." ([02:05])
William reflects on their early projects, emphasizing Carolyn's innate ability to provoke and reinterpret his work, fostering an environment where both artist and curator challenge each other to explore deeper creative territories.
William Kentridge:
"A great curator is also a provoker of the artist, not simply a receiver of finished work." ([03:36])
Timestamp: [03:43] – [09:35]
The conversation delves into the unique "sparring" dynamic between William and Carolyn, likening their interactions to a disciplined yet creative fencing match. This interplay allows them to anticipate each other's moves, fostering a harmonious yet intellectually stimulating partnership.
Penny Martin:
"Do you ever have a disagreement in this overall harmonious relationship?" ([05:49])
William candidly shares instances of resistance to Carolyn's ideas, highlighting the tension that ultimately leads to more refined and impactful artistic outcomes.
William Kentridge:
"It's almost always, God, how stupid I am. And of course, she's right." ([06:48])
Carolyn elaborates on how their disagreements stem from a shared understanding of the evolving nature of art, especially in the digital age, and how this mutual drive pushes their creative boundaries.
Timestamp: [13:20] – [16:31]
William introduces his latest installation, "Self Portrait as a Coffee Pot," curated by Carolyn. This multifaceted project comprises nine half-hour films that reflect on the artist's studio as both a physical and metaphoric space of creation. Filmed during the COVID lockdown, the works embody a conversation with oneself, blending past and present dialogues.
William Kentridge:
"It's about the studio as a place of making... and a metaphoric space of making meaning." ([13:34])
Carolyn discusses the immersive experience for viewers, who find themselves both inside and outside the creative process, enhancing their understanding of the intertwined nature of art and the artist's psyche.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev:
"The experience of the viewer is of being both inside the screen and outside the screen." ([15:53])
Timestamp: [17:19] – [25:28]
The discussion shifts to the intersection of traditional and digital mediums in art. William emphasizes his commitment to analog techniques, even as he incorporates digital tools for editing, maintaining a tactile connection to his work.
William Kentridge:
"There's a kind of an encouragement towards agency to people saying, yes, you can do it." ([24:23])
Carolyn observes how younger artists perceive their generation as analog pioneers, inspiring them to explore beyond digital confines. She highlights the importance of integrating art history with contemporary practices to foster a richer, more inclusive future for art.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev:
"The question is, what is the material of the digital age. That's the question that people are not thinking about." ([29:09])
Timestamp: [25:28] – [29:21]
When asked about their excitement for the future of art, William speaks passionately about upcoming projects that blend theater, music, and historical narratives, such as his chamber opera exploring a ship's journey from Marseille to Martinique in 1941.
William Kentridge:
"The next project is... a theatrical project, kind of chamber opera, about a ship's journey from Marseille to Martinique in 1941." ([26:06])
Carolyn anticipates significant shifts driven by the digital revolution, urging the art world to embrace new forms and technologies while integrating them with traditional practices to create a more dynamic and diverse artistic landscape.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev:
"There's a tremendous presumption in the art world when they say, oh, the NFTs are over. We have not come to terms with that yet." ([29:09])
Timestamp: [19:29] – [24:17]
William reminisces about his participation in the Biennale, expressing admiration for Venice’s historical and artistic legacy, particularly the Tiepolo ceiling in the Church of the Rosary. He shares how such timeless art continues to inspire his contemporary creations.
William Kentridge:
"It's a kind of a metaphor of the cloud and the Internet, where everybody has their own little device, but it's connected to some bigger imagined image of it." ([20:23])
Carolyn reflects on the interplay between past and present, emphasizing the importance of understanding art as an evolving conversation that bridges generations.
Timestamp: [29:35] – [31:22]
Wrapping up the episode, guests engage in a playful segment imagining what iconic Venetian elements they'd take home. From Jana’s appreciation for Venice’s architectural details to William’s humorous take on minimalism, the exchange underscores their deep connection to Venice’s artistic heritage.
William Kentridge:
"I feel like with the kind of current debates that are going on, I feel like we should leave things where they are." ([30:58])
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev:
"I wanted to check. When you've done Documenta, you can kind of speak with anybody." ([29:21])
"The Sparring Partners" episode of CHANEL Connects offers a profound glimpse into the collaborative spirit and intellectual camaraderie between William Kentridge and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Their dialogue not only highlights their individual and joint contributions to contemporary art but also provides thoughtful reflections on the evolving landscape of the art world. Through their shared experiences and visionary outlooks, listeners are inspired to contemplate the future intersections of tradition and innovation in art.
For more engaging conversations and in-depth explorations of art and culture, listen to other episodes of CHANEL Connects available on chanel.com.