The Insurance Man: Kafka in the Penal Colony

April 25 鈥� June 27, 2009
大象传媒 Gallery

The Insurance Man: Kafka in The Penal Colony is an installation based on Kafka鈥檚 story, which was itself derived from his reading a 1914 study of penal colonies in the South Seas. In the story a researcher-explorer arrives at a penal colony and is introduced to a curious apparatus comprised of a harrow, a designer, and a bed; the Officer who operates the apparatus lectures the Explorer about its workings. The subreality of everyday life in Prague and the inner world of office work were Kafka鈥檚 own 鈥榓pparatus of reality鈥�. He continually wrote about these parallel realities in letters, diaries, stories, office documents, manifestos, and aphorisms, all of which gave his inner world an intensely visual quality, merging life and art into a unified, fragmented whole. In the exhibition, the fable of the Colony is portrayed through objects, texts, and visual constructions shown as gestures representing the pre-history of Kafka鈥檚 report on the world as a chilling penal colony. The South Seas penal colonies here become a lexical metaphor for the 20th century鈥檚 concentration camps, asylum camps, and prison colonies.

The installation searches for Kafka鈥檚鈥楽ecret Insurance Policy鈥� that enabled him to relate his life in writing to art, perhaps in the way that Walter Benjamin wrote of Kafka, as 鈥渙ne who compelled Expressionism to bear fruit, by pruning it according to wild linguistic drives.鈥� This installation imitates both linguistic and visual drives: 鈥淚 imitated people,鈥� the ape says in Kafka鈥檚鈥楻eport to an Academy,鈥� 鈥渂ecause I was looking for a way out, and for no other reason鈥�.

Curated by Jerry Zaslove and Bill Jeffries.

Events

Curators鈥� Talk
Saturday, April 25, 2009, 2pm
On the origins and implications of the exhibition, in AQ 3003, the lecture hall adjacent to the 大象传媒 Gallery.
Followed by an opening reception in the Gallery, from 3-5pm.

Public Talk: The Search for Kafka鈥檚 Literary Legacy
Speaker: Kathi Diamant (renowned Kafka scholar)
Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 7pm
Room 7000, Harbour Centre, 515 West Hastings Street.

Lunchtime Tours of the Exhibition
Tuesday, April 28, 12:05pm and 12:35pm
Thursday, April 30, 12:05pm and 12:35pm

Kafka Film Festival, June 22 鈥� 25
Including Orson Welles鈥� The Trial, Michael Haneke鈥檚 The Castle, and Steven Soderbergh鈥檚 KAFKA, starring Jeremy Irons, Ian Holm, and Alec Guinness, plus award-winning animated short films.
Vancity Theatre, Vancouver International Film Centre, 1181 Seymour St., Vancouver.