Uncertainty / New Year 2025
With some downtime this week, I’m looking at the last year and planning for the future. As I’m thinking about the year ahead, things feel particularly uncertain. (In reality, things are always uncertain.) What I want to offer you today comes from a discussion I led in an art program with a community of family caregivers.
In November, the day after the US election, I gathered with a group of caregivers and all our post-election feelings. We watched an excerpt of William Kentridge’s film Automatic Writing. Then we discussed his process of creating films: Kentridge painstakingly creates a drawing in charcoal, then stands back to take a photo of his drawing, creating one frame of a film. He returns to the drawing to erase and redraw, then steps back to take another photo. Mark-by-mark, drawing-by-drawing, photo-by-photo he builds up an animation. It can take him several weeks of drawing to create just one minute of a film.
Kentridge never starts with a storyboard, never plans the narrative arc in advance. This allowing—a narrative, a feeling, a set of images to come together in a variety of ways—might be the essence of Kentridge’s work. His work is poetic, sad, humorous, guilt-ridden, and powerful.
Kentridge’s approach is inspiring. He says,
“I think the category of uncertainty—political uncertainty, philosophical uncertainty, uncertainty of images, is much closer to how the world is.
You can see the world as a series of facts or photographs, or you can see it as a process of unfolding…The uncertainty at the start of a film—where there isn’t a script or a storyboard—allows it to function in a more emblematic way of how we understand the world.”
Personally, when I read this quote I hear a bit of hope: What if all my dire predictions about the future are wrong?
For Kentridge, and for myself and many artists, it’s this uncertainty or unknown that’s actually an asset to the process. If I knew exactly what an artwork would look like before making it, where would be the sense of discovery? And when I do know exactly what an artwork will look like before making it, what are the ways in which I can be present with the process of making, and open to possibility?
I don’t know what the future will hold, but as a real catastrophizer, I know what it’s like to live with fear, and resist what seems uncertain. I wonder if instead of resisting or fearing the uncertain, we could all be a little more present in the process and allow it to unfold. Here’s hoping.
I have to say, beneath my fear of uncertainty I am full of hope for the future.
Happy New Year, I hope to connect in 2025,
Sonya
