BOOK 2
two
the metamorphosis a spatial investigation of Franz Kafka’s acclaimed novel
The Glasgow School of Art | MDes Interior Design 2013-14 | Andriana Themeli
BOOK 2 chapter 1 5
“Can you bring me file no.fkh00218, please?” 7
“The morning wrinkle on your face” 13
“How it feels to be the black sheep of the family” 19
“Daddy, please, stop it” 25
5
chapter 1
Gregor
wakes up one morning and discovers that he’s been turned into a bug. At the beginning he tries to go back to sleep in order to forget what has happened but he can’t. Then he starts thinking about his work and the difficulties that he confronts. After he realizes that he has been late at work, his mother stands out of his door to remind him to catch the train. Then, he is trying with all his power to get off the bed and get dressed. In the meanwhile, the office manager comes to check Gregor. His parents, his sister and the general manager are now outside his door, waiting for him to open his door as they worry. After hearing his strange voice, his sister leaves in order to call for a doctor. Finally, Gregor manages to open the door without realizing his transformation into a giant insect. His family and acquaintances are shocked and repulsed. The moment they look at him, the mother passes out, his father cries, and the general manager backs out. The father then picks up a newspaper and a cane and drives his son back into his bedroom. Gregor, in his effort to recede, injures himself at the door as he gets stuck and his father shoves him through.
7
“Can you bring me file no.fkh00218, please?”
Bureaucracy is a topic that has been worrying Kafka throughout almost all of his life and has pervaded his storylines. At the heart of his obsessive and horrifying narratives lie the difficulties of dealing with the public sector and the unfathomable bureaucracy, one that has emerged through a combination of inertia, default, and the institution of political power. In Metamorphosis, Gregor refers a lot to his work, describes in an analytic way his daily tasks and fears in his profession. The first room which serves as the entrance of the installation, is being designed in order to reflect these characteristics. The high walls create an explicitly defined path that frustrates the visitor and makes him want to find the way out. Each wall is made out of stacked piles of documents, encaged in metal wireframe. The document/file stands as the basic element of bureaucracy, as a symbol of a society that strives -but fails- to communicate effectively. At the end of the pathway, one comes across with the first line of the novel. This quote marks the beginning of the book and simultaneously the beginning of the journey! This sentence is one of the milestones openings in modern literature as it encapsulates the ''anacoluthon'', by making the utmost juxtaposition between fantasy and reality.
“The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.” Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line ‘Remove the documentand you remove the man.’ Mikhail Bulgakov
Playtime, 1967, Jacques Tati
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corridor
paper stack
“What an exhausting profession I’ve chosen...Work like this is far more unsettling than business conducted at home, and then I have the agony of traveling itself to contend with; worrying about the train connections, the irregular, unpalatable meals, and human intercourse that is constantly changing, never developing the least constancy or warmth. Devil take it all!�
13
“The morning wrinkle on your face”
A translucent curtain marks the entrance as well as the beginning of the story and gives a theatrical essence. As the curtain opens, the play starts. In this room, the audience is in the shoes of Gregor Samsa who ‘awakes one morning to find himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect’. Franz Kafka never defines in what kind of insect Gregor has transformed. He deliberately wanted each reader to draw his own form of bug. Since then, a lot of people have drawn, prescribe and make allegations of what exactly Kafka meant. In the room of identity the visitor makes an unconscious choice of what he wants to be. The darkness of the room stands for the inner part of our existence and the obscurity of our subconscious. The use of the water on the floor reflects the visitor’s figure but also distorts his idol through the ripples created as the audience walks in the room. Two big screens, hanging from the ceiling, are used for projections of bugs that overwhelm the audience’s mind and ask the spectator to reflect on his kind of Metamorphosis. The spectator in the dark and humid environment feels just like a newly born sort of being, overwhelmed by images of a different reality.
‘‘The psychological power of reflection transcends the science of refraction.’’ Steven Holl
La Reproduction interdite, 1937 Rene Magritte In this painting, Magritte illustrates the subjectiveness of our reflected in the mirror image
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reflection
projection
“What in the world has happened to me? he thought...Perhaps a hundred times he attempted it, closing his eyes so as not to have to see those struggling legs...�
19
“How it feels to be the black sheep of the family”
Right after his metamorphosis, the visitor ascends a stair and enters the room of repulsion. In the novel, after Gregor opens the door to his room, he confronts his parents as well as the general manager of his office. There, he receives their disgust and query that look at him. The visitor walks in the middle of a red, cylindrical space. In the perimeter of the room, a series of oversized human replicas intensify the sense of humiliation and inferiority. There, in the middle of the room and with the statues looking at him, the spectator listens to sounds of disgust, horror and fear. The intense red color aggregates the visitor’s response and stands a s a reference to his blush and embarrassment. Simultaneously, the ceiling lowers towards the center of the space, in order to increase the psychological pressure. A scaled version of “Panopticon”, Jeremy Bentham’s surveillance device is applied here, in order to control the spectator’s behaviour and reign his mind. The user then descends the stairs that lead him to the next scene.
Come and See, 2013 Jake&Dinos Chapman In this exhibition, the artists place among their works KKK-dressed mannequins that blended with the audience. The anonymity and the whiteness of the figures evokes a rather challenging atmosphere for the visitor that wanders around them.
“I am the red in remembered. Why am I red? Because I’m embarrassed. ” Jarod Kintz 22
pressed
humiliated
surrounded
“... but the manager must have sensed something, for he leapt down several steps at once and vanished; and the cry of horror he gave as he fled resounded through the stairwell�
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But the manager must have sensed something, for he leapt down several steps at once and vanished; and the cry of horror he gave as he fled resounded throught the stairwell.
“Daddy, please, stop it”
The next room, and the last of the first chapter deals with the first fight between Gregor and his father. The visitor, in the shoes of Gregor, must find the way to return to his room, but in a maze of rooms with doors standing on his way. The similar pattern of the maze disorients the visitor. Confusion, anxiety and despair are the feelings of Gregor in his effort to find the door of his room. With the sound of the newspaper -the weapon of the father- being sounded repeatedly, the spectator has to respond to his own fears. In order to escape he must find the exit. Which door will release him from the father’s force? There is only one single door that leads to the next room. This fact, in combination with the presence of numerous other spectators searching for the exit in the mazy space, makes the visitor’s effort even more difficult, even more vain. The father figure is very strong on Kafka’s book. It is the ultimate authority. This is the man that will impose the order. In this disturbing way, the obedience to the father is necessary. The austerity and rigidity of the design of the space, the monotony and repetition of the elements, stand for the male, the masculine symbol that has been worrying Kafka in most of his books. The exit from the parental menace is narrow as narrow is the crack of the wall that Gregor passes in order to go back to his room, hearted.
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disorientation
confusion
“... Gregor in his own pursuit, he seized the manager’s walking stick in one hand - it had been left lying on an armchair along with his overcoat and hat- with the other took upa large newspaper from the table, ad set about driving Gregor back into his room with a great stamping of feet, brandishing both newspaper and stick�
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