Artist: Roee Rosen
Exhibition title: Kafka for Kids and The Dust Channel
Venue: 1646, The Hague, The Netherlands
Date: February 11 – March 27, 2022
Photography: Jhoeko / images copyright and courtesy of the artist and 1646, The Hague. The photos of the opening are taken by Maarten Nauw
Note: Exhibition booklet is available here
Kafka in The Hague
The Hague’s art space 1646 is presenting the newest film by renowned artist Roee Rosen. The work retells the classical story The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. In a child-like way, we learn about the Kafkaesque Israeli law in occupied territory.
For Kafka for Kids and The Dust Channel, 1646 transforms into a cinema. A public premiere of the new two hour film Kafka for Kids, made by renowned artist, writer and filmmaker Roee Rosen, is complemented by his film The Dust Channel (2017). In his exhibition at 1646, Rosen offers a critical look into Israeli society’s private perversions and socio-political phobias. Kafka for Kids takes the shape of a musical pilot episode of a television series that aims to make Kafka’s tales suitable for toddlers. The film premiered for the jury of the IFFR 2022 Tiger Competition, after which it is on view for the public in 1646’s cinema.
Until when does a child remain a child?
Rosen’s practice deals with desire and structural violence, and questions the normative implications that come with them. He shows the complex and troubling ways of growing up under military law in occupied territories, but he does so through humor and poetic surprises. Through this feature-length film Kafka for Kids, which retells Kafka’s classic story The Metamorphosis, Rosen raises complex topics under the guise of a kids TV-show. Our protagonists in these stories include Franz Kafka’s vermin called Samsa, a toy orchestra and The Bearer of Bad News. Telling this story to a child is juxtaposed with reflections on how central law was in Kafka’s literature and life. Thus certain questions arise on both an emotional and imaginary level, as well as on a legal and political one. What is a child? Until when does a child remain a child?
Dust and sand as socio-political symbols
The Dust Channel was made for the occasion of the latest Documenta (no. 14) in 2017. The film takes the form of an operetta with a libretto in Russian, telling the story of a Dyson DC07 vacuum cleaner in the context of an Israeli home. A deep fear of dirt and dust pervades the bourgeois household, resulting in an extreme obsession with cleaning apparatuses. Meanwhile, dust is conflated with sand, and the film glides to a detention center for refugee seekers located in the Negev desert. The film exposes the multilayered narrative of individual and communal socio-political phobias within Israeli society, along with their connection to leisure and pleasure, abundance and perversions.
