Julian Barnes and William Kentridge are renowned fans of Shostakovich. The English writer wrote The noise of time (Anagrama/Angle), and now the South African artist premieres the film at the Liceu Oh, to believe in another world from the Symphony no by the Russian musician (and on Saturday he opens an exhibition at the Fundació Sorigué in Lleida).
Yesterday, in a sold-out CCCB Hall moderated by its director, Judit Carrera, the two began to talk about how they connected with the composer during their adolescence. Kentridge remembers that at first it seemed like “very visual music, that you can look at.” Barnes, who still has the first record that his older brother gave him or sold him – depending on the version that each one remembers – recalled the six-week trip he took as a young man, in a van, to the Soviet Union, and how he imagined the composer in Red Square.
The two creators talk at the CCCB based on Shostakovich’s work
To provide more context, a fragment of Kentridge’s film is shown, with its characteristic collages, bodies with faces of Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Mayakovsky or Shostakovich. Was the composer really a secret dissident or a supporter of the regime? Is it important? Kentridge and Barnes not only agree in valuing the music, they avoid simplifying, because they know that “neither being critical nor supporting Stalin was a guarantee of security,” says the composer, and Barnes makes it evident that “we forgot very quickly that it was not about “to choose to be brave or not, but to negotiate with the State.”
Kentridge speaks of a productive amnesia, later of a productive procrastination, and both produce, as we have seen, with humor and irony, which totalitarian regimes do not understand fine.
Kentridgey Barnes chatted at the CCCB
Carrera asks if they believe that music transcends other arts. According to Barnes, all artists envy other arts, and Kentridge claims that fine artists secretly want to write novels. They don’t know if their work will live on for long, but Shostakovich’s still resonates.
