| "TRIUMPHS and LAMENTS" is William Kentridge’s largest group of works of art currently,the preparatory period lasted about 15 years.In 2016,it was approved by the Rome municipal government to implement the artistic plan in Piazza Tevere.To be precise,this is a large-scale integrated art project,which includes painting,projection,band performance,singing and theater performance.The works are displayed in two types,one is in the form of pictures,on the 550-meter long embankment wall between the Tiber River in Rome and Ponte Sisto to Ponte Mazzini,51 images were printed;the other was a live performance form,and a half-hour performance in front of the city walls where the images were printed was held at 8 pm for two consecutive days on April 21-22,2016.The performance consisted of 110 people forming two parade teams.The team consisted of 19 people performing band,5 singers,50 flag bearers,25 choirs,10 dancing actors and two accompanying conductors.The theme of Triumphs and laments is "Triumph and Lament",which can also be understood as "victory and defeat".This pair of completely opposite concepts usually refers to two different results or states in conflict and war.Kentridge has always had a deep understanding of war and disaster,which is closely related to his life experience before his forties.Kentridge was a Jewish white born in Johannesburg,South Africa in the 1950s.Between the 1950s and the 1990s,the white government implemented inhumane apartheid against black South Africans in order to safeguard their racial interests and privileges.Many social problems have erupted throughout the South African world,with frequent armed struggles,violent conflicts and deaths.Kentridge has witnessed these real and painful histories,and they will follow Kentridge’s life like a shadow.In addition,his Jewish identity also carries too many painful histories.These belong to the history of the nation and the country,as well as personal life experience,will often appear in his works as a creative material.Although "The Triumph and Laments is related to Roman history,it does not only refer to Roman history.Through the content of the work,we can clearly understand that Roman history,as the true background of the work,it also contains many other national and contemporary materials,creating a generalized world picture.In other words,what the artist wants to present and express is a universal truth behind many different events and phenomena:the victory of one person must be the failure of another.In the same space,the artist uses three completely different formal languages at the same time,paintings on the wall,live parades and shadows projected on the wall.The image content comes from historical documents and cultural relics related to Rome,and it has the clearest meaning.The shadow is used here as an independent component,but this does not mean that the shadow is detached from the noumenon or given the same life attributes as the noumenon.The relationship between it and the noumenon is predetermined,and they are always with each other,but never equal.Kentridge regards shadow as the side effect" of ontological behavior,and shows two effects that are considered ontological behavior,and shows two effects that are considered completely opposite,we must not consider them as a whole,at least it is necessary to think so at first,think of them as two related but different objects.The content of the performance part is the most complicated and diverse.On the one hand,it has similar and corresponding parts to the image part.Such as the actor’s modeling,some props used in the performance,and the organization of the performance.On the other hand,the performance mixes elements of ancient and contemporary,life and drama,Rome and non-Roman,which makes the meaning of the performance part full Uncertainty and ambiguity that the meaning of the performance part is full of uncertainty and ambiguity.From the above,it can be determined that three formal clues have been developed at the same time in the works,which are both independent and interrelated.Furthermore,it will be found that under the obvious formal relationship,the meaning content is hidden.Such a structural form reminds the author of Bakhtin’s polyphony theory,because the narrative structure of the various components in "Triumphs and Laments" also reflects the characteristics of polyphony.Bakhtin,a well-known Russian and Soviet literary theorist,used the concept of "polyphony in music when analyzing the structure of literary works.The specific content appeared in his work on the characteristics of Dostoevsky’s novels,namely IIPOSJEMbI(?).Bakhtin pointed out that Dostoevsky created a new novel mode,that is,"polyphonic novels",with "polyphonic thinking" that was different from other people in the past and his contemporaries."Various types of unmixed sounds and consciousness,all kinds of sounds of sufficient value are positively accepted.This is polyphony,which is the basic feature of Dostoevsky’s novel." "The main protagonists in the novel are not only the object of the author’s discourse,but also the subject of their own,directly meaningful discourse.The protagonist’s consciousness is regarded as another consciousness(non-author’s),the consciousness of others It has not become a pure object of author’s consciousness."The characteristics pointed out by Bakhtin appear in "polyphonic novels",which are completely opposite to the traditional"monologue" novels in Europe,and construct a complete real world through different"voices".It can be understood from these remarks that the most important feature of the type of polyphonic novels that Bakhtin believes is that the world allows different voices at the same time,and each voice is an independent and complete tone,which manifests itself as a separate development Logical clues,tonality and tonality have different forms of cross-relationships for some reason.The author quotes Bakhtin’s polyphony in this thesis to analyze the complex narrative structure of Triumph and Laments,but here polyphony and Bakhtin’s polyphony do not refer to the same polyphony.Bakhtin’s polyphony refers to the coexistence of different ideas highlighted by the existence of different characters in the same space world,that is,the problem of coexistence of different values,and thus reflects a polyphony of value.The polyphony of Triumph and Laments is a complex triple-form polyphony,that is,three clues formed by the three parts of image,shadow,and performance team.The author just borrows the deep thinking analysis logic of Bakhtin’s polyphony to analyze the structural content of the work.It can be said that the polyphony of Triumph and Laments is a more complex polyphony than Bakhtin’s polyphony,which will be demonstrated in detail in the text. |
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