Der Process. C-Type prints on board. 2010
The novel by Franz Kafka that we know as The Trial had as its original German title Der Process. In my piece, the pages from the book were physically separated, scanned and then digitally layered to create ten composite images (one for each chapter). The resulting prints gain a new visual complexity while at the same time being emptied of lexical comprehensibility. I am very fascinated by those works of literature, and languages, that have wavered between survival and destruction and therefore between communication and incomprehension. Various influences and images fed into this work including the carbonised scrolls from Herculaneum, the Rosetta Stone and the charred 'Beowulf' codex in the British library.
Kafka himself left instructions that after his death his friend Max Brod should destroy all of his surviving manuscripts and unpublished work. Brod, of course, famously disregarded the will, and so the great novels---America, The Castle and The Trial---come down to us themselves reclaimed from the jaws, and the intent, of destruction.
The novel by Franz Kafka that we know as The Trial had as its original German title Der Process. In my piece, the pages from the book were physically separated, scanned and then digitally layered to create ten composite images (one for each chapter). The resulting prints gain a new visual complexity while at the same time being emptied of lexical comprehensibility. I am very fascinated by those works of literature, and languages, that have wavered between survival and destruction and therefore between communication and incomprehension. Various influences and images fed into this work including the carbonised scrolls from Herculaneum, the Rosetta Stone and the charred 'Beowulf' codex in the British library.
Kafka himself left instructions that after his death his friend Max Brod should destroy all of his surviving manuscripts and unpublished work. Brod, of course, famously disregarded the will, and so the great novels---America, The Castle and The Trial---come down to us themselves reclaimed from the jaws, and the intent, of destruction.