My chosen book to summarize is the novel “The Castle” from Franz Kafka. It is not a book I chose from the library but a book I had. I chose this because it’s closely related to one of my recent works and it’s the only book lately I could read from it’s beginning to the end.

In the novel, the protagonist only known as K is coming to the village but struggles to fit or gain access to the local authorities governing from the castle. Kafka’s protagonist has to face a bureaucratic windmill fight which prevents him to settle down. He can’t start his work even though he has been called there to work as a land-surveyor.

As he tries to get access to the local bureaucracy he learns that the people from the village can’t address the people from the castle and they can’t enter the castle either.

Still, the people of the village holds them in high regard even if they are unsure about what are they doing in the castle so his determination to get access to the castle and to the authorities seeds distrusts in the locals. K is stuck in one place as he can’t progress any further and slowly being alienated.

The castle remains a mysterious form in the background as the book remains unfinished.

Kafka’s death prevented him to finish his novel.

Making these pictures was a direct response to the idea that artists need to have money to produce artwork because creating artworks costs
money, which I don’t have only bills.

To make these pictures I cut my letters and bills into pieces and made collages from them using paint as a glue. I used my bills or other legal documents I had to send to my potential employers or landlords to find a flat and a job in the UK as it became harder and a more closely bureaucratized task after Brexit.

The pictures represent my frustration with fighting these useless fights with these non- existent figures who only appears to me as email addresses and my fading hope under the bureaucratic pressure.

As I started to work on these collages they naturally became abstractions of the castle from Franz Kafka’s novel “The Castle”.

The Castle’s protagonist only known as K struggles against the local bureaucracy in a way that feels very familiar to me and in a way that I can identify with it. The book remains unfinished because of Kafka’s death so the castle in question remains a mysterious force.

To my surprise what was started out as a way to take out my anger slowly became something conscious and something I was interested in developing. In the future, I am planning to send these pictures of employer targets and then make similar collages from the responses I’ll get to further develop this project.