The World of K

‘The world of K., or the prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy’ is based on Franz Kafka’s book Der Prozess. Kafka (1883-1924) wrote the book between 1914 -15 and it was posthumously published in 1925. Der Prozess tells the story of bank clerk Jozef K who is arrested one morning without any apparent reason. Unclear legal proceedings are taken against him and he ends up in an absurdist world of obscure law court attendants and endless bureaucracy.

How can we read and interpret a book like Der Prozess in this day and age? What is the role of absurdism within the context of our current political situation? Or is politics itself perhaps becoming a Kafkaesque scenario? The artists in ‘The world of K., or the prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy’, all reflect in their own way on themes from Kafka’s work. Specially for this exhibition they have made new work in which both literature and social responsibility play a role.

The term Kafkaesque is still often used to refer to frustrating or complicated bureaucratic processes or to describe an oppressive or alienating feeling. But it goes beyond a frustrating bureaucracy; it’s an all-encompassing, surrealistic system from which an individual cannot escape. K finds himself caught within an unfathomable judicial system that never tells him what he is being tried for.

Important themes in Der Prozess are power, bureaucracy, the absurdist nature of our existence and the failure of legal systems. The book was written in a period of political unrest and instability and is still relevant today. Situations in our current society also seem Kafkaesque and absurd and are related to unjust and ambiguous bureaucratic processes that play a role in Der Prozess. People who are jailed without trial, fake news, detention of immigrants; all scenarios that are everyday occurrences and bear a suspicious resemblance to K’s world.