WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

William Kentridge — Politics of Time

The Refusal of Time makes standardized clock time visible as a historical and political technology. Clock time was essential to industrial labour, railways, administration, communication, empire and global coordination.

Local / plural time → standardized time → synchronization → administrative / industrial control. The apparently neutral clock thus raises the question: Who owns time?

Kentridge uses machine, projection, drawing, music, procession and performing body to make abstract temporal systems physically perceptible. Time becomes spatial installation and embodied historical process.

Connection to Hsieh:

HSIEH: BODY IS SUBMITTED TO STANDARDIZED TIME.

KENTRIDGE: STANDARDIZED TIME ITSELF BECOMES THE SUBJECT OF CRITIQUE.

Submission to time → refusal of synchronization. This is not simply temporal freedom; it exposes the power embedded in coordination.

Politics of time is retained here as explanatory content rather than a separate visible child category.