one of my favorite artists is william kentridge. i think his animations are among some of the most powerful in the history of the moving image. students in my 1531 course are working sequentially to produce a photographic slideshow that essentially functions as a slow moving animation. the topic?? abject self-portrait. art students are typically pushed towards the self portrait at the undergraduate level, and with good reason. kentridge’s work is not only abject (in terms of culture, nation and medium) but often he deals with and uses his own body for his characters. its a way of taking reposnsibility for the images you make and throughout the history of art one can find artists working on, through, about and from themselves. a nice technique that he uses is to split the fame in half and begin with a double representation on the same image. this is the main focus in stereoscope. i think this tactic or strategy can be used with success for the abject self-portrait. his use of charcoal to make his animations is also particularly wonderful because of the ways that charcoal-and especially erased charcoal-leaves a trace. what happens is the passage of time made plain, yet poetic. students-remember to make the passage of time a central theme in this work. can you invent a technique?