Franz Kafka Intermedial

Appropriations and Effects Between Image, Sound and Word

Annual Conference of the Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council

The topicality of Kafka's work is underlined by highly polyphonic interpretative positions, which, however, ultimately point to the uninterpretability of literature in general and to an unease about this inexhaustibility, ambiguity and ambiguity of the work. On the 100th anniversary of the death of the author of this culture or industry of interpretation, the conference will therefore focus less on reinterpretations of the author, work and context and more on appropriations and effects in the most diverse arts, but also in contexts of everyday life, popular culture and ultimately memory culture. Linked to this are questions about the impact and implementation of an author canonized as a world literary figure in the global field of art and about the diffusion of Kafka's texts and motifs or memes into the most diverse areas of society.

To what extent does Kafka's own relationship to the visual and performing arts and music, but also to film, influence his texts? Are there structural correspondences between his texts and his now widely edited drawings?

Is the intermedial reception purely content-related or is it pre-structured by Kafka's „translations“ of the arts and media into his texts?

What forms and means are used to react to Kafka's texts in the global field of art?

Can similarities be observed in the appropriation of Kafka's texts in the various arts or are they each specific?

What becomes of the specifics of Kafka's writing through the diffusion of the author into everyday and popular cultural contexts? Or: How much Kafka is there in the Kafkaesque?

The program is available in German or in Czech.

Further information can be found here: https://herder-forschungsrat.de/veranstaltungen/festival-franz-kafka-intermedial-aneignungen-und-wirkungen-zwischen-bild-ton-und-wort (registration partially compulsory)

Organised by: Johann Gottfried Herder Research Council, Kurt Krolop Research Center at Charles University Prague, Institute of Germanic Studies, Faculty of Arts, Charles University Prague

In cooperation with: German Embassy Prague, Adalbert-Stifter-Verein Munich, West Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen, Goethe Institute Prague, Austrian Cultural Forum Prague, DOX-Centre for Contemporary Art

Contact: Prof. Dr. Steffen Höhne, University of Music „Franz Liszt“ Weimar | Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Prof. Dr. Manfred Weinberg, Institute for Germanic Studies | Faculty of Philosophy, Charles University Prague