The Unfolding Kafka Festival returns next month with one-of-a-kind artists who will share their intimate experiences that may be surreal and absurd, yet touch on the humane.
Coming from multifaceted backgrounds, artists from France, Portugal, Czech Republic, Japan, Germany, Israel, Spain and Australia will present their craft through performances, installations, artist talks and workshops. This year the festival also hosts collaboration between Thai artists and guest artists to cultivate a more meaningful exchange.
The grand festival opening, Baroque Experience, celebrates the amalgamation of music, dance and visual arts with the return of Thai choreographer Jitti Chompee's absurdist pink animals crawling into the Baroque world of French conductor Michaël Cousteau.
On the occasion of the 335th anniversary of the Siamese diplomatic journey to France, the French embassy presents this special collaboration between Cousteau and Jitti to share the stage with 18 Monkeys Dance Theatre and the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music Baroque Ensemble. Catch this fascinating synthesis of Baroque and surrealism at the Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music on Nov 3 and at Alliance Française Bangkok on Nov 5.
An unmissable highlight, PLI by the Czech circus and dance artist Viktor Černický creates a massive sculptural creature out of 22 conference chairs. This mass gets deconstructed and disintegrates, but is continually rebuilt and regrows into metamorphosing architecture. Černický becomes a small figure in his ever collapsing surroundings as if inside the Kafkaesque control of supernatural forces upon the delicate human. The audience is captivated into his percussive realm where he plays with spontaneity. Černický transports his oeuvre to Bangkok on Nov 9 at Lido Connect and Nov 12 at The Peninsula Hotel, where he adapts his piece to playfully fit with each performance site.
There will be double bill performances such as on Nov 9, when Viktor Černický shares the stage with Alexandre Fandard, a French visual and performance artist. The solo Comme Un Symbole by Fandard deals with his identity as a symbol of a young man from the urban margins who carries the weight of archetypes that society places upon him. He will also share a second solo, Quelques-uns Le Demeurent, on Nov 10 at Lido Connect which dives into an altered psyche and physical state of the body under madness. There is a sense of psychological darkness that Kafka has inscribed in his works where societal structures can make or break a man. Director Jitti Chompee has invited Fandard to share his physically demanding works that pushes his body to physical and emotional extremes to question the power of identity.
On Nov 10 at Lido Connect, Alexandre Fandard shares the night with a contrasting playful duet Cascas d'OvO, by Portuguese duo Jonas Lopes and Lander Patrick who go by the name Jonas & Lander. As Fandard explores the depths of isolation, Jonas & Lander dive into a relational connection that is strong enough to be telepathic -- one of which Kafka never had with his father but connected with him through his written sentiments. Cascas d'OvO whimsically plays with how two bodies communicate through body rhythm and pure trust.
The Jim Thompson Art Center will host Australian dance artist James Batchelor who will perform with Thai dancer Pakhamon Hemachandra in two duets and one solo called Shortcuts To Familiar Places on Nov 19-20. James Batchelor explores body memories that have passed down through generations of dance education in Australia. Fragments of gestures, forms and patterns survive in the body through the constant cycle of sharing and receiving from educators to students. Once this movement is shared with a Thai dancer, a dynamic chemistry will arise. Reflecting on the value of an enriching dance education, festival director Jitti Chompee questions where this can be found in Thailand. With all the potential that he sees, he is driven to create a platform to open opportunities for young ones to foster professional pathways in dance, which unfortunately is not yet a possibility in Thailand.
A performative intervention in Bangkok's massage tourism is brought by the German duo artists katze und krieg in The Metamorphage. Next to the infamous Thai massage shops in Bangkok, the duo opens a pop-up store to offer an alternative form of massage. A presentation of their endeavour takes place at Jim Thompson Art Center on Nov 19.
A screening of German drama film Wild directed by Nicolette Krebitz also takes place at the Jim Thompson Art Center on Nov 19. The film follows a woman who lets her animalistic desires run free in an uncanny encounter with a wild wolf. In another gallery space in the museum, a dance video installation NO-Body by Israeli choreographer and performer Roni Chadash runs during museum hours on Nov 19-20. Chadash's remarkable body folds and unfolds to transform her physicality into peculiar creatures.
Japanese choreographer and multimedia visual artist Hiroaki Umeda will share his video installations at the Jim Thompson Art Center from Nov 22-27. In Haptic Installation Umeda invites the participant to experience a chromatic light installation with their eyes closed. The participants perceive photic stimuli in the form of monochrome or colour lines behind their eyelids. As another viewer watches the participant in the space, their experience as the spectator resembles how we observe animal behaviour in a zoo. Umeda's second installation Mold 1 choreographs a dance performance with a digital object.
The spaces inside Jim Thompson Art Center will transform into an open playground for experimentation and self discovery. Passersby are invited to be creative, play and dance with Viktor Černický's 22 chairs from PLI. Similarly, viewers can use their imagination to interact and move with Hiroaki Umeda's digital dance Mold 1. The festival invites you to experiment with these installations, film your endeavours, and submit them by #unfoldingkafkafestival. The selected best video will be awarded a prize of 10,000 baht.
Whether you encounter art through exhibition, literature, film, performance or installation, the Unfolding Kafka Festival is an opportunity to experience conceptual performance art. Aiming not only to entertain you, the festival rather makes you feel and think about your own reality. Contemporary art can challenge you to find beauty in ugliness… like Kafka's animal expresses something far more than the despised creature you might cross by in the streets of our chaotic Bangkok.
Tickets are available at ticketmelon.com or email unfoldingkafkafestival@gmail.com. For more information on the festival programme and participating artists, visit unfoldingkafkafestival.com.
