The Magic of Shadows
This chapter examines how William Kentridge develops his investigation of Plato’s allegory in More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015), unravelling it and testing the limits of his commitment to it. It is proposed that Kentridge’s use of pre-cinematic techniques to conceal the image and keep it at a distance reflects Jean-Luc Nancy’s understanding of the image as distanced and separate. Nancean thinking can work in conjunction with the artist’s imagery and conceptual logic because it considers the personal and corporeal in conjunction with community and commonality, in other words, how we coexist in the world. The Nancean singular plural is visualised in Kentridge’s winding procession in which singular and plural coexist in a spaced intimacy.