A light bulb flickers the seat height in the large shop window of the Kunsthalle. The changing rhythm of illuminating and extinguishing results from the transformation of a spoken recorded text by Franz Kafka into light signals. Kafka’s text – taken from the novel fragment America 1911-14 – deals with a scene in a confusing hotel complex at a porter’s lodge, in which speaking and understanding hardly seems possible any more.

 

These ten questioners, who were continually changing, spoke in a babel of different languages, as though each one of them had been sent from a different country. There were always some asking their questions at the same time, while some others were talking amongst themselves. For the most part, they wanted to collect something from the porter’s lodge or leave something there, and so you could always see hands waving impatiently out of the mass of people. Now someone wanted some newspaper, which was abruptly unfolded from above and briefly covered everyone’s faces. And the two underporters had to stand up to all this. Mere speaking would not have been enough, they had to babble, and one of them especially, a gloomy man with a beard that surrounded his whole face, gave information without the slightest break. He looked neither at the desk in front of him, where he had various things to do too, nor at the faces of any of his inquisitors, but just in front of him, obviously to save his strength. His beard must have impeded the clarity of his speech, and in the few moments Karl stoodbeside him, he could understand very little of what he said, al- though perhaps, for all that it still sounded like English, he might just have been replying in some foreignlanguage.

From: „Amerika” by Franz Kafka

Light installation with light bulb, fabric cable, socket, lanbox, controller.

Developed within the framework of sololala, Sophiensaele Berlin, International Solo Festival by Steffi Weismann Antoine Chessex, lighting concept: Rut Waldeyer, Florian Bach, Bruno Pocheron