Philip Miller, Refuse the Hour

A conversation plus musical illustrations with South African composer Philip Miller, a longtime collaborator of the artist and compatriot William Kentridge as they mounted their multimedia extravaganza as part of BAM's 2015 Next Wave Festival. Aside from this big show, the two have some wonderful miniatures called Paper Music with delightful animations by Kentridge that you can see on YouTube. He also gives an interesting analysis of the art and music scene in South Africa,

In Refuse the Hour, Kentridge delivers an elliptical lecture-performance on the nature of temporality in front of giant on-stage metronomes and with a cast of 12 dancers, musicians, performers, and vocalists. Miller’s compositions underscore this lecture-performance by playfully exploring the different ways in which time manifests in music — from re-imagining the singing of Berlioz’s Le Spectre de la Rose in reverse, to colliding out-of-sync metronomes with frenetic African drumming.

Miller and Kentridge began their artistic partnership in 1993 with the film Felix in Exile — part of Kentridge’s celebrated Soho Eckstein series for which Miller wrote the music. The artists have since collaborated on many projects, including I am not me, the horse is not mine (2012) at the Tate Modern and the installation The Refusal of Time, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and documenta 13.

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