Author(s): Udo Kittelmann

Literature | Art | Film | Music

The exhibition 'K' features Martin Kippenberger's legendary artwork 'The Happy End of Franz Kafka's 'Amerika', accompanied by Orson Welles' iconic film 'The Trial' and Tangerine Dream's late electronic album 'Franz Kafka The Castle'. Conceived by Udo Kittelmann as a coexisting trilogy, 'K' is inspired by three uncompleted and seminal novels by Franz Kafka (1883-1924) 'Amerika' (America), 'Der Prozess' (The Trial), and 'Das Schloss' (The Castle) posthumously published from 1925 and 1927. The unfinished nature of these books allows multiple and open readings and their adaptation into an exhibition project, that explored the novels' subjects and atmospheres through allusions and interpretations. As underlined by Udo Kittelmann, America, The Trial, and The Castle form a 'trilogy of loneliness,' according to Kafka's executor Max Brod. Seen in this light, we may also view 'K' as a triptych, an exhibition that resembles a tripartite, triple-layered picture. The structure is therefore similar to that of a traditional altarpiece, with America occupying the large central panel and The Trial and The Castle the side panels. The three parts can be read together as a remarkable allegory of the vicissitudes of life, or, in Kafka's words: 'All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already.' Exhibition: Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy (21.02.-27.07.2020).

Slipcased in a giant "K," this beautiful book looks at three treatments of Kafka by Martin Kippenberger, Orson Welles and Tangerine Dream

Gathering three works by Martin Kippenberger, Orson Welles and Tangerine Dream inspired by Kafka's uncompleted novels Amerika, The Trial and The Castle, K is also a tribute to the publishers and translators of Kafka, and their republication of texts or first translations into English or Italian. The preferred editions of the three novels in English and Italian republished in K are those translated from the restored versions of the German texts.

The structure of the book is led by archival documents with cross-references shown next to the texts representing correspondences with Kafka's thinking.