Greetings inquisitive readers! My name Is Justin Anthony Botz, and I am excited to welcome you to this year’s Interdisciplinary Arts & Media MFA blog series!

I hope my blog posts will give you a better idea of what the Interdisciplinary Arts & Media MFA program is all about and that you will be inspired to create, take risks, and go places artistically you never thought possible.

To start us off, let’s talk about one of my favorite interdisciplinary artists, William Kentridge.
 CREATION FROM FRAGMENTS

“One’s memory is not this perfect photographic film that holds an image without changing it. [It requires] accepting what appears as fact as provisional, as temporary, as a moment within the larger ambit of transformation…The job of the artist is to fight against entropy – to keep on taking these fragments and say, ‘What can they become?’ To take the fragments and construct something provisionally new. And that’s the link from memory, to fragments, to the activity of making.”

-William Kentridge

William Kentridge is a South African artist who experienced firsthand the dissolution of apartheid and is best known for his prints, charcoal drawings, and animated films. He also works in theater and opera and recently produced a rendition of Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera, The Nose, at the Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Kentridge’s artistic process is fascinating to me.

He uses film, drawing, animation, and performance to transform serious political events into powerful poetic pieces of art. He photographs his charcoal drawings and paper collages and records scenes as they slowly evolve, working without a script or a story board.

This short video will give you a better idea of what I’m talking about.

As the above quote suggests, Kentridge’s artistic practice is about taking fragments and asking, “What can they become?” And in answering that question, he is able to move toward constructing something new and beautiful. This has been one of the great lessons I have learned (and am still learning) from the Interdisciplinary Arts Department: how to make something whole from fragments.

To many people, interdisciplinary art might seem fragmented. We take classes in performance, programming, lighting, sound, and image excavation. To some, it might seem like a bunch of unconnected pieces, but if we learn to ask like Kentridge, “What can these fragments become?”, we discover that they indeed can be connected, and we are able to move toward making something wonderful ourselves.

If you are interested in learning more about William Kentridge and his work, check out the documentary Anything is Possible on art21.org.