Shandean Resonances in William Kentridge's 'Lesson from the Absurd'

In William Kentridge’s tapestries entitled Streets of the City, a series of maps of the city of Naples and its Kingdom serves as background for the eccentric wanderings of an equestrian Nose inspired by a line of writers of the absurd, from Cervantes to Sterne and Gogol, which had attracted the artist’s attention from the time of his preliminary work for the production of Shostakovich’s opera The Nose.
My paper aims to discuss the central role played by Sterne along this line of estranging noses by focusing on the brief but significant section the South-African artist devotes to Tristram Shandy’s author in his notable lecture/performance on the absurd, which comes to do full justice both to Sterne’s consummate art of interpolation and to his crafty authorial investment in all sorts of mistranslation.