THE POLITICAL PEN |
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The Trial, like Franz Kafka's other novels, was never completed; it was edited and published posthumously by Kafka’s friend, Max Brod. It therefore seems in keeping with Kafka’s literary appropriation to have his first book signing also completed posthumously by another: For his commissioned project at Frieze Art Fair this year, The Batchelor Project, Norwegian artist Per-Oskar Leu chose to recreate Kafka’s signature with an autopen, selling several ‘signed’ editions of The Trial, 85 years after the author’s death. Crudely summarized, The Trial is centered around the character of Josef K, the banker, who, on his 30th birthday, is arrested for an unknown crime. Throughout the year of his trial, K declines from a confident to nervous state, as his fate becomes increasingly ominous. During this time, K learns that society is biased in favour of the bureaucrat and starts to lose his will to live and faith in others. On the last day of K's 30th year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has come to terms with its inevitability. The Trial is often read as emblematic of Kafka’s philosophical cynicism - that the end is inevitable and existence absurd, so we must begin an introspective search for spiritual meaning. Kafka often discusses purpose and punishment as a dual concept, which can be further analysed in his short story, The Penal Colony. This tale features a prisoner strapped to a bed, learning of his crime and punishments as they are inscribed onto his body by an automated machine, something akin to, what I imagine as, the hybrid of a tattoo needle and the autopen. The Penal Colony exists of two distinctive realms: the machine/dictator and the persecuted subject. The morality of these are unclear, but can be loosely interpreted as metaphors for society and individual. Given that Kafka implies the individual is seldom able to control their fate, introspection, again, becomes a necessary attribute in order to possess, control or understand the personal. Kafka’s physical and mechanical split between society/machine and man has been compared by theorist Michel Carrouges to Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23, otherwise known as Batchelor Machine - the very same title, I imagine, Per-Oskar Leu’s project at Frieze derived his from. Duchamp’s Batchelor Machine refers to an assemblage of mechanical objects in a large glass cabinet, consisting of the ‘bride’ above, and the ‘bachelors’ below, both desiring and imagining one another without any possibility of mutual comprehension. With a leap of imagination, a further parallel relationship might be drawn between Donald Rumsfeld and the mothers of soldiers killed in the Iraq War during 2004, to whom he wrote letters of condolence, but signed his name with an autopen – never touching the paper with his hand. The US Defense Secretary was accused of stolid and disrespectful behavour, in contrast with the sympathetic and compassionate nature the letters were meant to have conveyed. Rumsfeld promptly apologized and pledged to sign all sensitive letters personally in future. In Kafka's story of The Penal Colony, the officer in charge of the punishment, seeing that the colony’s system was breaking down, places himself in the punishing bed, at the mercy of the ‘autopen’ and dies as the machine self-destructs. The autopen is inherently emotive, intended to form a compromise between making every signature by hand, which can take up a great deal of time for the signer, and printing a reproduction of the signature, which can be felt impersonal by the recipient. The machine, in this case, bears the responsibility of doing the right thing, but perhaps by the wrong means. Society’s use of rigid laws and autonomous machines is often burdened with the same criticism; they are unable to differ from person to person to treat each case individually, instead, they are designed to benefit the majority, whoever that may be and however that might be done. Per-Oskar Leu’s project, then, is extremely politically charged. Staging a posthumous book signing, a book not even authorized by its ‘author’ is a form of hijack and depersonalization in the guise of honour. Leu is no doubt aware of this, and, if anything, the title of the project suggests that the conflict inherent in ‘doing right by the wrong means’ is part of his intention. Consequentially, though I cannot speak on behalf of ‘die-hard’ Kafka fans, the deliberate irony becomes somewhat amusing rather than offensive. Based at a commercial art fair, however, the link between the significance of the signature, edition number and authentication of an artwork, and its commercial value, cannot be ignored. Yet Per-Oskar Leu has done well; in his choice of Kafka, over, say, the reproduction of a Hirst signature on a number of posters of Hirst prints, he has managed to subtly and with sophistication critique several complex issues pertaining to authenticity and personal responsibility versus the machine, without reducing his argument to the tiresome “did he make that himself, or did he get someone/something else to do it?” The curator of Frieze Art Fair Projects, Neville Wakefield, stated: "Whether taking the form of grand architectural obstruction or finding new ways of protesting, authenticating or motivating our relationship to the objects we make, look at and buy, this year’s projects create aesthetic opportunity out of the uncertainty that has become the hallmark of our troubled times." Per-Oskar Leu’s The Batchelor Project not only successfully addressed a complex set of links between sinister machine-human relationships, but also the trope of authors, philosophers and artists who have engaged in critiquing these relationships within society. I am thus proud to own Kafka’s first signed edition of The Trial, even if I can’t read German! |
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