ART CITIES:MILAN-K

The exhibition project “K” brings together works by Martin Kippenberger, Orson Welles, and the electronic music band Tangerine Dream. With years of distance, the three authors explored the themes of the three unfinished and posthumously published novels by Franz Kafka “The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika)”, “The Trial” and “The Castle” and their different atmospheres according to a personal narrative and new adaptations.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Fondazione Prada Archive

Martin Kippenberger’s “The Happy End of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika” (1994) takes inspiration from the last fragment of Amerika—in which the young Karl Rossmann, surrounded by the box offices at Clayton racecourse, applied for a job in a theater company; Martin Kippenberger gave shape to a job-interview contest set up on a soccer field, where more than 40 table-chair combinations are displayed. At the behest of the artist himself, the dimensions of the work and the number of tables and chairs may vary according to the size of the exhibition space. The work is exhibited in Italy for the first time, with the soccer field having almost the same size as its first presentation at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in 1994. On the occasion of this exhibition, some iconic pieces of the history of Italian design, selected together with the Estate of Martin Kippenberger, complement the combinations conceived by the artist in 1994. In directing his movie “The Trial” (1962), Orson Welles, who also played the role of the advocate in the film, followed the plot almost faithfully. Nevertheless, in the transposition to cinema, Welles made the main character Joseph K. more active than in the novel, while also choosing a different scenario for his tragic end. The film features the participation  of actors Arnoldo Foà, Romy Schneider, Jeanne Moreau, and Paola Mori. Edgar Froese, founder and the only continuous member until his death in January 2015 of the Krautrock music band Tangerine Dream, composed 10 tracks for the album “Franz Kafka The Castle” (2013). The album consists of ten new compositions, eight of them composed by Edgar Froese, one by Thorsten Quaeschning, and one by both. Following decades of pioneering research in electronic and ambient music as well as a few soundtracks for cinema the band devoted themselves to translating the Franz Kafka novel into a soundscape, creating a music narrative for the story of K. and his failed attempts at reaching the castle.

Info: Curator: Udo Kittelmann, Fondazione Prada, Largo Isarco 2, Milan, Duration: 30/1/20-10/1/21, Days & Hours: Fri-Sun 10:00-19:00, www.fondazioneprada.org