Doing things with books: A Conversation with William Kentridge

A conversation exploring William Kentridge’s lifelong engagement with the book—from altered texts to flip-book animations—and the page as a site of history, memory, and erasure.

Renowned South African artist William Kentridge has engaged with the book in all its forms throughout his career. While his early work in the 1980s and 90s frequently incorporated found paper and fragments, his 1999 project Curs Pràctic de Gramàtica Catalana, based on a facsimile of a 1933 Catalan grammar, established the ‘book-as-object’ as a sustained concern. This public conversation examines the enduring role of the book in Kentridge’s work, from his iconic flip-book animations to his use of the page as a site of historical palimpsest and erasure.