The Refusal of Time

In May 10^th, I went to William Kentridge’s installation, "The Refusal of Time",  which is located in 399, first floor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In this installation, Kentridge divided this room into three parts, the videos, including five screens, the auditions, including several horns, and the real objects, which are several chairs, and a large machine. On the five screens, some videos and animations were played, and the videos seem to be played with different timeline, which express a sense of four dimension. Then, on the different horns, different sounds were played, also shows an influence of time on the sounds. Lastly, the machine, which looks like metronome, is essential in the whole exhibition. The beats of metronome seemed to be varied, and showed the theme, "The Refusal of Time".

Some of the videos are extremely impressive to me. The first one is the scene that many people are moving around the wall, holding some old-fashioned stuff. They walked from one wall to another, breaking the limitation of the space and that of time. Besides, the other scenes also impressed me a lot. Since Kentridge is an artist from South Africa, his videos really showed the lives of South Africa people in a different way. In the show, Kentridge portrayed a number of different scenes about the lives of people. For example, he once portrayed a woman hiding her mistress under the cover of a tablecloth, but when the husband of this woman picked up the tablecloth, the mistress turned into a frog. It might reflect people’s lives in some way, but more in an expression of art.

Fake Documentary

cilick here<<<<<

Linear vs. Non Linear Time (finished piece)

cover

back

1

2

3

4

5

6

ending 1

ending2

real book

Linear vs. Non Linear Time (2)

Linear vs. Non Linear Time (1)

My final project will be an eight pages graphic novel, which will have two different endings in the end of the story. I will use tracing paper to hide the endings and try to make the readers choose the ending they want.

This is the rough draft of my graphic novel.

Memento

The movie is about a man who has trouble to remember any recent memory, Leonard. His wife was killed by two men at first. Then, he wants to revenge. By his friend Teddy's help, he finds the killer and kills him, but he does not remember it. Then, Teddy and Natalie (a girlfriend of a man who is killed by Leonard) exploit Leonard to kill a lot of people that they want to kill. In order to remember some important information, Leonard keeps them by tattoos and Polaroid photograph. However, he changes or destroys some of them and makes himself confused. Finally, he kills Teddy and believes his revenge is over, but in fact, his wife was killed by him because of too much insulin.

The director, Christopher Nolan, uses two different sequences of scenes (one is black and white, and one is color) to create two time lines, and he also arranges them in random (or maybe a very) order. That totally made me confused at first, and I have to watch it again. I think Christopher Nolan arranges the scenes in this unique way because he wants to create the scene of anterograde amnesia (Leonard’s disease). As what Leonard says in the movie, “Memory is unreliable.” Our viewers are also deceived by our own memory and get lost in our memory’s labyrinth.

Jorge Luis Borges

Circular Ruins

It is a story about a magician’s dream. At first of the story, he wants to create a man by his dream. And finally, with the fire’s help, he successes, and the man becomes a “real” man and a part of the “reality”. However, the man and other people may not know he is just a dream of the magician. And only the god of fire and the magician know fire can prove the man is not real.

I think the last part in this novel is interesting. “He walked into the tatters of flame, but they did not bite his flesh—they caressed him, bathed him without heat and without combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he realized that he, too, was but appearance, that another man was dreaming him. “

After reading this story, I begin to wonder if the world in our eyes is real or maybe it is just a person’s dream? But if our world is a person’s dream, the world that the person lives could also be someone’s dream. Just like a labyrinth, which has not exit.

The Library of Babel

Jorge Luis Borges wants to show the universe in his mind in this novel. He thinks the universe is like a library with “infinite number of hexagonal galleries”. Because the letters can compose infinite words, his universe is infinite. Also, he names the library “Babel” because it is a heaven to him. Books are his belief.

Honestly, I read this novel a few times, but I cannot understand a lot of details that Jorge Luis Borges talks about. However, I think he believes the uncountable books in the library are the labyrinths, because the same books are always infinitely published. Their repeatability becomes the order of his universe.