William Kentridge
Automatic Writing

2003
Video, colour, sound
2:55 min.
Contemporary Art Collection
© William Kentridge/Edition Point of Departure: An Anthology of the Moving Image

The video work “Automatic Writing”, 2003 is based on a 35mm film. It shows drawings that have been translated into an animation by means of variation and sequencing. The story is told through an interplay of image and subtext. Trying to decipher the subtext, we realise that it is incoherent and makes no obvious sense. Kentridge’s sources of inspiration are séances and communication with the supernatural on the one hand, and psychoanalysis with its practice of automatic writing and freedom of the subconscious on the other. Kentridge works predominantly in black and white, drawing always being the starting point.