components of the piece can threaten the deliverance, but the decision to use limited colour and maintain stark lines in the video, balances and bolsters the visual communication. The silhouette scene appears reminiscent of Plato’s allegory of the cave in which three prisoners have just shadows on the cave wall from which to draw conclusions of the world. The parable goes on to tell of one prisoner escaping the cave and upon suddenly realising the existence of the outside world, returns to tell the other prisoners who turn away in disbelief. It’s a story of the limitations of our perception of reality and also about what is required in order to truly gain wisdom together. By simplifying the figures to shadows Kentridge invites the viewer to expand their thinking beyond the visual information available to them, like the prisoner escaping from the cave.

The title, ‘The Refusal of Time’, can also be linked to the industrial revolution and the origin of time zones. Time zones were introduced during the turn of the industrial revolution in order to schedule trains correctly according to different local times, since people had never travelled long distance so quickly. In an interview Kentridge described “a refusal (from non-west countries) of the European sense of order imposed by time zones; not only literally, but a refusal that also referred metaphorically to other forms of control as well.” (Kentridge, 2014). With this he was describing the opposition non-western countries such as South Africa had to being amalgamated into the Western cultural infrastructure using, in part, their system of time zones. In a way, it was a literal refusal of time. During Kentridge’s life-time, due to the differences in regime and political chaos, South Africa’s relationship with the west has been laboured.

Though there are moments of narrative and structure throughout the piece, they are somewhat fragmented. The artist has made an effort to emphasise ambiguity so that the individual viewer may experience the piece differently based on their own personal context. This can be linked back to Kentridge’s Interest in the theory of relativity in which Einstein states “Only experience can decide as to it’s correctness or incorrectness”(Einstein, 1920). William Kentridge has made physical what Einstein theorised, albeit in a somewhat abstract way. Even the chairs, strangely placed around the roo