William Kentridge & the dress rehearsal for the Holocaust

With Black Box / Chambre Noire the Jewish Historical Museum presents the first exhibition by South African artist William Kentridge in the Netherlands. A multimedia artwork On the first genocide of the 20th century. Now on display at the Jewish Historical Museum.

Armed with clubs, two dark shadowy figures beat each other's brains out. And then a third victim, kneeling and unarmed, who shatters after the blows. Music by Mozart can be heard in the background. The figures turn into inky black jackals, pumping oil from the earth, and the image changes back to the ramming males with their clubs. This is one of many disruptive fragments from Black Box / Chambre Noire: a magisterial multimedia artwork by the South African artist William Kentridge (Johannesburg, 1955). Now on view at the Jewish Historical Museum, for the first time in the Netherlands.

Kentridge is an internationally respected artist, but not very well known in our country. Last month, he took to the stage himself with his performance Refuse The Hour at the Holland Festival. The Stedelijk Museum had also been working on an exhibition of his work for some time. It was planned last year, but because of the renovation, that exhibition could not take place. Now Black Box / Chambre Noire on view at the Jewish Historical Museum. A work from 2005, Kentridge was commissioned by Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. It is the first time his work has been shown in a Dutch museum.

The artwork is a miniature mechanical theatre made of wood and paper, entirely controlled by computers. In it, Kentridge focuses on a tragic event identified by the United Nations as the first genocide of the 20th century: the murder of thousands of members of the Herero and Nama peoples in southwest Africa by German colonial troops. As project leader Hetty Berg called it in her speech at the opening: a dress rehearsal for the Holocaust.

Six computerised puppet figures commemorate the story of this genocide - or as a form of Trauerarbeit, as can be read on one of the figurines - against the backdrop of a dizzying stream of dynamic image and video projections. In addition to this work, the JHM is also showing 50 charcoal drawings that Kentridge made in preparation, and two animation films from his earlier working period: Felix in Exile (1994) and The History of the Main Complaint (1996).

And you really need to sit down for that.

Black Box / Chambre Noire is made up of countless layers of images, each of which is worked out in a virtuoso and playful manner in frenzied detail. Alongside Kentridge's drawings and animations, countless archival images pass by in a stream of images: fragments of old newspaper clippings and postcards of Africa, college notes, photographs of chained slaves, coarse-grained film footage of rhinoceros hunting, maps, statistics on gold mine yields, and victims' lists of names. The flow of images is propelled by the ominous soundscape by composer Phillip Miller.

The idea for Black Box / Chambre Noire arose when Kentridge was working on the staging of Mozart's opera Die Zauberflöte (2005). He discovered that a theatre maquette offered a unique form to combine all his different art forms: collage, puppetry, charcoal drawings, stop-motion animation, theatre, opera, film and photography.

The result is an elusive and stunning work of art, which seems to reveal something new with every viewing. Tip: upon entering, go straight to the installation, only then view the rest, and then immerse yourself once more in Black Box / Chambre Noire.