The Revolt of the Object: Animated Drawings and the Colonial Archive: William Kentridge's Black Box Theatre

Abstract

When South African visual artist William Kentridge accepted the yearly assignment of the German Guggenheim Foundation, he decided for that occasion to thematize the link between Germany and Africa's colonial histories. In particular he decided to highlight the under-researched history of the genocide by the German colonizers of the Herrero tribe in South-West Africa (now Namibia). This resulted in the multilayered and impressive installation Black Box/Chambre Noir, staged in Berlin in 2005. On many levels the performance realized an encounter between German colonial history and the histories of anti-Semitism and Nazism. In this essay I lead the reader on a virtual tour through the installation, highlighting the multidirectional materialization of colonialism, modernism and fascism as staged in the multimedia environment of Black Box. The issue of commissioning from the German Guggenheim Foundation and the subsequent exposition of Black Box in the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam will be explored in order to elaborate on the significance of the intersections of different histories of violence for the reconfiguration of European postcolonial consciousness.