The World of K Finissage

Sunday 23 June is the last day that The World of K, or the prophecy of the excesses or modern bureaucracy can be seen at Nieuwe Vide. On this day we will have a special program provided by the first-year-students of Illustration Design from Artez Zwolle. They were inspired by the book 1984 by George Orwell, a dystopian story about the all-seeing and controlling eye of totalitarian regimes. In their work, the students have made connections between this literary classic and contemporary international politics, and how that affects the personal sphere.

This is connected to the other dystopian classic Der Prozess by Franz Kafka, which is inspired by the current exhibition The World of K. With this exhibition, Nieuwe Vide marked the beginning of its two-year-program on absurdism. Franz Kafka’s world full of bureaucratic systems has become a synonym for absurdism. For the exhibition The World of K., 5 artists have created new work that is both inspired by Kafka’s oeuvre as well as reflecting on situations in our current society that recalls the Kafkaesque and absurdism. Nieuwe Vide also published the leaflet K. as a supplement to the exhibition. Here the Kafkaesque is related to the unjust and ambiguous bureaucratic processes, and how we can break through these oppressive systems.