Thoughts on an intervention
William Kentridge has a message for you. Two messages, actually. If you’ve recently travelled on the M1 or M2 highways you might have seen them: “Breathe” reads one billboard and “Weigh all tears” reads another.
The two billboards form part of the Highway Notice Project, a collaboration between the Centre for the Less Good Idea and celebrated artists that came about in response to the pandemic and what it means for us to be physically distancing from one another in states of lockdown.
“The Highway Notice Project was about giving momentum to artists, giving a space for artists to express themselves and giving audiences, in this case chance audiences moving along the highway, the continued humanising factor that art provides for society,” says Kentridge.
Kentridge is the mastermind behind the first two billboards, that bear his signature “Blue Rubrics” style. These went up at the beginning of October as the first instalment of six that will go up over the next six months. Curated by Bronwyn Lace, each month will feature different artists and collaborations.
Kentridge’s messages have multiple meanings. “Breathe” has three. Covid-19 has affected the way people breathe and has compromised breath — an obvious physical reference. The second is George Floyd’s utterance “I can’t breathe”, catapulting the world into the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The third is the planet’s ecological lack of breath.
“Weigh all tears” comes from a poem Kentridge read as a sort of call to find a scale that would weigh the significance of individuals’ tears.
Put into context, he is interested in the open-ended riddle of how all of our tears and all of the tears resulting from this time need to be held and given focus to. “There’s a deep mourning and a deep time of uncertainty, and the billboards want to reflect on that,” says Kentridge.
Next month’s billboards will have a different feel and look. Featuring artists Oratile Konopi and Sindiso Nyoni, they have a gritty, urban feel and contain language and words with multiple meanings.
Traditionally, billboards sell a product. In this case, says Kentridge, the product is thought. “The provocation is to think more deeply. It is a celebration of uncertainty.
It is also a reminder that art and artists and their voices have been vastly diminished over these past few months, and we place them back into our landscape by this small intervention of occupying billboards.”