In Praise of Failure

Acclaimed South African visual and theater artist William Kentridge inaugurates a season-long engagement, In Praise of Failure, a project which celebrates the great importance of failure in any creative process.

Throughout the Spring of 2020 BPL hosts a diverse group of creatives-in-residence working across disciplines, from art to letters, business to science to develop new works. Marking the beginning of this process, Kentridge will listen to their germinal ideas and provide feedback, insights and potential pathways forward.

BPL’s season In Praise of Failure is the result of a partnership with Kentridge and the arts incubator he founded and runs in Johannesburg, South Africa, The Center for the Less Good Idea. Since 2014, The Centre has invited a group of performing, visual, musical and literary artists to develop and cross-pollinate ideas and new works, aiming to find the less good idea. The Centre celebrates artistic risk and creative experimentation, or secondary thinking— by which ideas give way to other more solid ones—and believes an ensemble sees the world differently to how one individual does. It is a safe space for failure, for projects to be tried and discarded; a space for short-form work which doesn’t have a natural home in a theatre or gallery.

The partnership with The Centre for the Less Good Idea continues to evolve over the course of 2020 with BPL’s own interdisciplinary workshop. A series of public programs will share the creative process of creatives-in-residence, culminating in a finale performance in the Spring. An exhibition of works by artists at The Centre and these creatives-in-residence in Brooklyn will bridge artistic, multi-disciplinary output between Johannesburg and Brooklyn.

 

Programs:

William Kentridge: In Praise of Failure, A Beginning

In Praise of Failure Creative Residency - A Wider Conversation Public Panel Review & Discussion