O Sentimental Machine

Three greats in their field, the South African visual artist William Kentridge, the French composer François Sarhan and the Belgian music ensemble Ictus have created this beguiling mixture of video animation, concert and expressionist pantomime.

Soviet Communism, Futurist art, scientific fanaticism and belief in the New Man are explored in an absurd spectacle. With brilliant visual and musical montage techniques and poems by the Russian writer Daniil Harms, the dark side of dreams of a better world is brought to flickering light. Because what is left of the belief in the future in the face of history as we know it today?

The ironic and sensual quality of the animated film by William Kentridge helps the evening to create wondrous images and playful lightness. The poems by Daniil Harms provide grotesque humor. Old Soviet films give it historical depth. François Sarhan's music creates the right sound: sometimes seductive, sometimes irritating, both utopian and old-fashioned - a wild mix of styles that seems to have sprung from the nightmares of the young Shostakovich.

This reinterpretation of the modern age of the 1920s shows how fascinating but also frightening this time and its ideas were, which still determine world events today.