Completed Painting: [dc]circuit 05/Kafka

'[dc]circuit 05/Kafka', Acrylic, Paper Collage & Mixed Media on Panel,
400 mm x 400 mm, 2026

Finally, we reach the fifth and final panel in my suite of ‘[dc]circuit’ paintings - namely, ‘[dc]circuit 05/Kafka’. Given the alchemical sequence implied in this group (as discussed in my last post), it’s only fitting that this one should be gold(ish) in its overall palette, and a variety of metallics do catch the light when it’s viewed from certain angles. It also seems appropriate that this one should be dedicated to Franz Kafka - my own personal gold standard when it comes to influential/inspirational literature. Given all my other tastes, it’s perhaps too predictable that I should also be a Kafka fan-boy, but there it is - he’s as good as it gets for me, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

This is the smallest of the set of five - being 400 mm square. When I first began to envisage these panels I decided to break my usual habit of painting related works or series of works at the same scale and format, and to inject a little more irregularity into proceedings. Therefore, whilst the three rectangular elements share a 600 mm x 400 mm portrait format, this one and ’02’ are square, albeit radically different in scale (’02’ being 600 mm x 600 mm). It felt important that the gold panel should be the smallest, suggesting a degree of value/scarcity, or perhaps that the best things often come in small packages. As is well known, Kafka’s novelistic oeuvre is also pretty small, and regarding ‘finished’ ones - even smaller. Admittedly, he somewhat made up for that with his copious output of short stories, but it was the novels I had particularly in mind here - specifically, ‘The Castle’ [1.].

Although it is never directly referenced in the text, it seems clear to me that Franz’s castle is, to all intents and purposes, the Pražký Hrad of his own home town, Prague. Anyone familiar with that destination knows how that massive edifice presides over the rest of the city, whilst somehow managing to remain strangely aloof. Just like Kafka’s castle, it is physically difficult to access frontally, involving a trek across the wide river on a congested bridge, before climbing steep streets and a formidable flight of stone stairs. The nominally ‘easier’ far entrance still involves a tram journey to a stop that many out-of-town visitors will fail to recognise, thus requiring a significant back-tracking exercise on foot. 

Of course, Kafka’s own castle is as much of a state of mind as a physical entity, with his hapless and reluctant Land Agent, K, repeatedly failing to gain acceptance by its ruling bureaucracy, and by extension - the infuriatingly obstructive denizens of the lower settlement, just as he fails to locate the correct route to a building he can clearly see. That neither his duties or any estate under his purview are ever defined, and that all roads repeatedly deny him access, seem to speak both to the Deleuzian idea of de/territorialisation mentioned in my previous post, and to the constant processes of random cartographic atomisation that characterise my work. As the novel unfolds, it becomes evident that gaining grudging favour from above is also difficult for the characters K encounters, and very easily lost also - for reasons none can fully explain. Worse still, he appears to become increasingly complicit in the worsening condition of any with whom he might have formed a relationship. As an outsider lacking any previous knowledge of the Castle and the impenetrable social hierarchies it dictates, he really never stood a chance. Kafka abandons his novel mid-thought (just as death interrupts a life, perhaps - allegory fans), suggesting he has become just as exhausted as is his protagonist, by the impenetrable world he has depicted.

Anyone lucky enough to visit Prague’s Hrad for ‘real’ will know that it is to encounter an enclosed, self-rposessed world of interlocking courtyards, internalised worship, arcane libraries, barred towers, and even a ‘hidden’ lane set aside for its incorporated subordinates. It is built on such a scale as to constitute a separate city within a city, and one has little sense of the streets below, once one is absorbed within its walls. For all it’s status as a prime tourist spectacle, complete with occasional outbursts of picturesque pageantry, it mostly exudes an air of eerie implacability and hidden intelligences - a fitting seat perhaps for the truly incestuous Hapsburg elite for whom it became at least a partial H.Q. The aforementioned and quaintly claustrophobic ‘Golden Lane’, enclosed towards the rear of the castle complex, was originally built for the royal goldsmiths, and it transpires that one of Kafka’s sisters later rented one of the small dwellings there for a while. Franz would occasionally visit, to write in relative seclusion.

My own little panel scrambles maps of the surrounding Hradčany district, along with a (partial) ground plan of the edifice itself in eroded form. The addition of a ghostly ‘K’ should be fairly obvious - it being the single most significant Kafkaesque ‘character’, if one refers to the protagonists of his three novels. My translation of ‘The Castle’ to ‘Das Schloss’ reflects the fact that, as a member of the minority Jewish population of Prague, Franz was expected to speak and write in German rather than the dominant Czech tongue. In effect, he was himself culturally marginalised twice over.

Whilst engaged in the production of these ‘[dc]circuit’ panels, I also happened to read a popular history of Prague, ‘Prague in Black and Gold’, by Peter Demetz [2.]. Of particular interest was the chapter outlining the reign of Rudolf II (the Bohemian lands being just one component of his territorial possessions as Holy Roman Emperor). Rudolf stands as a singularly picturesque but somewhat reclusive member of the Hapsburgs - a dynasty not exactly short on eccentric  characters. He ruled as HRE between 1576 and 1612, and is often seen as having partially  facilitating the catastrophic Thirty Years War that would convulse Europe, through his ineffectual  or misguided statecraft. Of more relevance to my own project is his status as one of the most voraciously acquisitive Renaissance collectors of art, jewels, weaponry, specimens of natural history, proto-scientific equipment, and exotica of all kinds. Alongside his famed ‘cabinet of curiosities’, he compiled an extensive and fantastic library to reflect his many interests and enthusiasms - not least of which was Alchemy. During Rudolph's reign, the numerous artists, scholars, philosophers, astronomers, astrologers, antiquarian dealers and cultural envoys invited to his court, were accompanied by a small army of alchemists - many of whom were patronised in their researches by the Emperor. Notable amongst these were the infamous John Dee and his distinctly shadier associate, Edward Kelley.

Thus it was that, for a period, Prague became famed as an alchemical hot-spot throughout Europe. Numerous medieval cellars throughout the ‘Golden City’, some still buried beneath the grand Baroque architecture that tourists now flock to admire, would become choked with fumes and encrusted with residues from experiments of varying degrees of toxicity and/or fatality. One might even argue that, at certain subterranean locations, the very fabric of the Prague became chemically altered - just as it was perhaps psychically transformed by the alchemists’ quest. I’ve long been fascinated by the ideas behind what became known as Psychogeography, but can’t help wondering if Psycho-chemistry isn’t also a label we might usefully employ. After all, any city is a kind of reactive crucible, whose multiple narratives might be recounted through the resulting accretions of grime, patination and chemical residues found on every surface.

Anyhow, his concludes my posts relating to each of the individual ‘[dc]circuit’ panels. However, the actual intention was always to compose an assemblage of five components that might be viewed as a whole, and I’ve yet to decide exactly how successful (or otherwise) I may have been in this. Lacking any easily accessible wall large enough to hang the group, I really need now to mock them up in miniature to assess how well they work together, and in which configuration(s) they might best be viewed. Certainly, their deliberately varying shapes and sizes dictate that a little creative experimentation is required there. Therefore, I hope to devote one more post to the group as a whole - and perhaps also to detail the overall alchemical sequence as it is finally revealed. 

Sometimes it feels like documenting all this stuff is almost more work than making the blinkin’ things in the first place!

[1.]:  Franz Kafka, ‘The Castle’ [Trans. J. A. Underwood], London/NYC, Penguin, 1926/1997

[2.]:  Peter Demetz, ‘Prague in Black and Gold’, London/NYC, Penguin, 1997

[Komponiert ohne künstliche intelligenz]