Let’s get straight to it, before we divert you
How much is the ticket? Admission to the programme 180 CZK | Combined admission to the programme and the KAFKAesque exhibition 350 CZK
What about DOX Club members? Free (advance booking required via the form below)
The debate will be held in English and simultaneous interpretation into Czech will be provided.
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Poupětova 1, Praha 7
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The year 2019 brought a sensational discovery: hundreds of drawings by Franz Kafka were found in a private collection that for decades had been kept under lock and key. Although Kafka is renowned for his written work, his drawings are evidence of what his friend and literary executor Max Brod termed his "double talent." Irresistible and full of fascinating figures, shifting from the realistic to the fantastic, the grotesque, the uncanny, and the carnivalesque, they illuminate a previously unknown side of the quintessential modernist author.
In 2021, the eminent Kafka scholar Andreas Kilcher edited Franz Kafka: The Drawings, an impressive and beautiful book that has so far been translated into 10 languages. In his lecture, Kilcher will present Kafka's drawings in the context of Kafka's biography and art history, as well as his literary writing.
Andreas Kilcher has been Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies at ETH Zurich since 2008. He has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Stanford, UC Davis, and Tel Aviv, among others. His research specialises in Jewish literary and cultural history, literature, and knowledge as well as occultism. He has written on authors such as Thomas Mann, Joseph Roth, Jiri Langer, and especially Franz Kafka and his surroundings in Prague. In 2008 he published a short Kafka biography; in 2021 he edited Franz Kafka: The Drawings (English edition Yale University Press), and in May 2024 his new monograph Kafka's Werkstatt. Der Schriftsteller bei der Arbeit (Kafka's workshop. The writer at work) was published focusing on Kafka's writing practice.
The event was supported by Embassy of Switzerland in the Czech Republic
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The exhibition KAFKAesque focuses on reflections on Kafka’s work and poetics in contemporary visual art offering not a historical perspective of his work, but a view that reflects our present-day situation with all its complexities and ambiguities.
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Another instalment of the long-term project, which combines the format of an exhibition and a classroom and focuses on the theme of human identity. Who am I? What am I? The human form naturally takes centre stage; the body, its clothing, its behaviour. A person's identity and the different ways of looking at it.
Franz Kafka and contemporary artists: Mat Collishaw
How does literature inspire British artist Mat Collishaw's own creation? How do language and text find their way into his work, and what other artistic genres does he enjoy combining? Otto M. Urban, curator of the KAFKAesque exhibition, will discuss with the British artist on board the airship Gulliver.
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Franz Kafka and contemporary artists: Jan van Oost & Alexander Tinei
How does literature inspire contemporary artist to create their own work? How do language and text find their way into their work, and what other artistic genres does they enjoy combining? Otto M. Urban, curator of the KAFKAesque exhibition, will discuss with artist Jan van Oost and Alexander Tinei on board the airship Gulliver.
Contemporary writer in Europe
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Franz Kafka's Drawings
Eminent Kafka scholar Andreas Kilcher will present drawings by Franz Kafka discovered in 2019 in the context of Kafka's biography and art history as well as his literary work and his impressive book, which has been translated into ten languages to date.
