To see Waiting for the Sibyl by William Kentridge, one is led through a small dark passage and into a dark hidden room. The audio-visual work created in 2020 is being projected onto the wall of this room, the only light in the darkness. The room itself is made up specifically for this purpose, the walls have black fabric pulled over them, and the floor is bare and dark save for a persian rug, sitting in front of the wall. Seating is arranged around the rug, making it feel homely and cozy, more like an old family gathering rather than a contemporary art piece.
The video itself features a book as its centerpiece, placed onto a black background with red squiggles and lines drawn on it, the blue cover disappearing when a unidentified hand opens it. However, instead of this hand continuing to flip pages for the benefit of the audience, the book flips pages on its own. Each one shows a drawn artwork or text, either stagnating as the pages repeat and tilt to create the illusion of motion, or a detailed animation, repeated only once or twice throughout the video if at all. It is a combination of physically created and digitally created things.
The main recurring theme is the colors. Red colored pencil is used to mark frames at the bottom of the pages, showing when they repeat or when an animation repeats. It is also used when a squiggle animation overloads the splayed open pages of the book, a combination of red, black and white; or when a black graphite drawing or animation is shown, used as an outline of the figure.
Black is the main favorite, though, shown in a graphite drawing of a woman dancing, then smudged across the whole page to turn the room black, or as ink, for a more detailed and delicate painting.
Once, memorably, brighter, more saturated colors are used to separate two sections in the video, using various geometric shapes in yellow, red, orange, brown, blue, green etc. While red and black are a reocurring color choice, blue becomes a large part nearing the end of the video. Instead of black ink, the paintings use blue ink, and just as with the graphite, at one point both pages of the book are covered entirely in blue.
Sound is also a very big part of this installation. Because it is sung in a language I cannot speak, the lyrics and what they could mean escape me, but with how it reverberated through the room, I could only think that it fit very well with the accompanying visuals. The musicians sing what I assume to be a style of traditional African music, a loud, melodious song, sometimes deep and rough, sometimes light and high.
My immediate interpretation, just hearing the music and seeing about five seconds worth of footage was that the piece was meant to relate to slavery and being shackled to a place not your own, but as I watched it more clearer meanings solidified in my mind.
The second thought was that it was a social commentary on what is “required” from citizens and what actually matters. The text that was shown in Waiting for the Sibyl was nonsensical, or on the other side of the spectrum, very serious. The way it was shown, black and bold, on pages of printed text, made it feel like a news report. Something that was telling you what to do, without telling you why you should do it. Much of the text referred to things you could do and think that wouldn’t affect anyone around you in the slightest, so it felt like a jab at the strict “suggestions” governments sometimes make.
Overall, the text was very contradictory, at some parts it felt like the message was to enjoy life to the fullest, accompanied by slightly ominous messages of a soon and certain death. In other parts the text suggested a message of not enjoying some things that life offers, a negative view on the world. The suggestion that even if you do this it will not delay the inevitable, the truth that humans are just one small speck in this universe.
Kentridge, W. (2020). Waiting for the Sibyl. [Audiovisual art]. Fragilités, Prague, 2022
