A new video titled “Ball” from Everynone, which gained a lot of its following from collaborating with RadioLab and WNYC (their video “Moments” makes me tear up every time).

The above piece reminded me of our program with artist William Kentridge from March 2010 called “Learning from the Absurd”….

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: So you wouldn’t walk similarly, let’s say, if you were walking with an ear than if you were walking with a nose.

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: No, no, I think that’s right.

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: And it’s quite important.

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: Because, you see with an ear, with an ear you’ve got a circular, an ear is a circular object, so there’s a sense of a circular movement built into the way an ear might listen, but the nose is kind of you following—shifts at quite an angular—

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER: You’re led by the nose in a different way.

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE: You’re led by the nose in a very different way. It’s the same way when you’re drawing a cat, for example. A cat—the principle of a cat is its spine. You have a sense that the cat is made by the spine, so a cat is always a line, so you draw any rough line, and you smush around with charcoal around it and you’ve got a cat, okay. Whereas a dog you have a sense—a dog is always led by its nose, so you have a single point that’s moving where a dog sniffs, so that’s a difference. So that’s a kind of a grammar of animals, if you want to say, for drawing or for performing.

Watch/listen to the whole program here… and watch the Conversation Portrait from the evening here…