William Kentridge, His Majesty, the Nose (stills), from the installation I am not me, the horse is not mine, 2008; Collection of the artist; © 2008 William Kentridge; photo: John Hodgkiss, courtesy the artist.

An image found in many of Kentridge's films is a man falling from above. In this installation after the man climbs up a shaky wooden ladder and out of sight, the ladder turns into a carefully drawn one. You may not notice the switch from wood to charcoal. Then the animated ladder splinters, flies apart and the man falls from above. He walks off unhurt and the cycle begins again.

In Day for Night, Kentridge includes several sequences showing a field of moving stars. There are also strange drawn lines running through them, suggesting we are looking at some form of animated astronomical chart. What we are actually looking at is a high contrast negative image and those moving dots of light moving through a black sky are a tribute to the surrealist painter/filmmaker Salvador Dali. Yes, this is negative footage of ants.

In the same film an animated full moon rises in the night sky. Moon? Look closely and you will realize it is a ceramic saucer. In other sequences in both Day for Night and Journey to the Moon, he walks around with the cup's bottom pressed to his eye suggesting it is some sort of telescope. And when his rocket ship takes off for the moon it turns out to be a metal espresso coffeepot with angular sides.

One aspect I enjoy about Kentridge is that he doesn't treat his images as something that can't be changed and played with once they are in finished films. On the Internet different versions of images used in Seven Fragments can be seen. He has reedited the past into new forms to construct this version of The Artist in the Studio.

William Kentridge, Drawing for the opera The Magic Flute, 2004–5; Private collection, Ross, California; © 2008 William Kentridge; photo: John Hodgkiss, courtesy the artist.

While designing multi-projection displays is a remarkable accomplishment, when Kentridge received the commission to develop "sets" for Mozart's Magic Flute from La Monnaie, the royal opera house of Belgium, he envisioned an even more complex presentation system. The Magic Flute project is divided into four works (2003-2007) that became more technically and artistically complex as the works progressed.

The first phase of his explorations resulted in Learning the Flute, 2003. His projection screen is a large gray classroom blackboard and his chalk is white light created by doing ink or charcoal animation on white paper and then projecting a high contrast negative image of it. The black lines become white against a solid black. He also projects complex drawings that include building facades. The drawings are accompanied by the overture to the Mozart opera. The 8-min. piece was shot on 35mm film.

Preparing the Flute, 2005, was created with a large-scale model of a theater stage. It was used to study different front and rear projection techniques and other design problems. The 8 or 9-foot wide proscenium stage is equipped with a main curtain, a rear projection screen, and a series of side curtains made of scrim material, a sheer fabric like nylon that allows images to be projected onto them and/or allows you to see what is behind the scrim if that area is well lit. There are also scrims covering the width of the stage that can be raised and lowered. In this study Kentridge treats us to a 21-minute long performance of music from the opera with a rich variety of constantly changing visuals. In it he used most of his techniques plus a few new tricks. Each aria is accompanied with different visuals. A computer controls the lighting, the front and rear projectors, the raising and lowering of scrims, etc.

One delightful sequence has him in silhouette conjuring up large animated birds. Some arias take place in front of imposing buildings; others have star-fields for backgrounds. My favorite set is what appears to be a fireworks display for the finale. This cascade of tiny particles was not created with explosives, but with fountains of water lit (and then processed electronically) so the drops sparkle in the light against a black background.

When the opera was performed in New York, The New York Times critic said, "Artist's video adds magic to Flute… The result is an exuberant dialogue between drawing and music, a three-dimensional work of art with video projected across and around the human figures onstage. Sometimes the animations echo the characters' thoughts; mathematical diagrams stand in for the teachings of Sarastro and his priests. Sometimes they reflect the music, with white lines reaching upward during a chorus, like fireworks… Mr. Kentridge's Magic Flute is based on the metaphor of the early camera, using the palette of a film negative, white on black, to reflect the opera's shifting presentation of good and evil."

In the New York Magazine article about the opera they also mention Kentridge's references to good and evil. It noted that in the Berlin production it was appropriate for him to include disturbing symbolic film footage of a white hunter shooting a rhinoceros. By the time the production had reached NYC the footage had been replaced with a dancing rhino that can stand upright and do handstands.

The archival footage of the hunter was not discarded; it reappears in Black Box/Chambre Noire, 2005-'06, 22-minutes, his second miniature stage production. While The Magic Flute explores enlightenment, this work explores the darker side of life. Kentridge say the installation looks at "the damages of colonialism, which described its predations to itself as bringing enlightenment to the Dark Continent." He also says the work refers to the 1904-'07 rebellion and subsequent genocide of the Herero peoples of German SW Africa (now Namibia).