One hundred years after the death of Franz Kafka, the Jewish Museum Berlin is providing new insights into his work with its exhibition Access Kafka: manuscripts and drawings from Franz Kafka’s estate come together with contemporary art by artists. 

In its broadest sense, the term “access” refers to the permission, freedom and ability to enter or leave a place – including an imaginary or virtual space. Questions of admission and affiliation are a recurring motif in Kafka’s literary texts. His unsettling descriptions of disorientation, surveillance and meaningless rules are relevant in a different way today than they were in Kafka’s era: the boundaries between private and public spheres are blurring in our age of widespread digitization, in which social networks, artificial intelligence and algorithms control access anonymously. These circumstances define the conditions for social participation. The exhibition Access Kafka and accompanying program invite you to follow, participate in and further develop these reflections.

Access Kafka, curated by Shelley Harten, will run from 13 December 2024 to 4 May 2025 at Jüdische Museum Berlin.

Image: Fatoş İrwen, The Other History: Read, 2019–2020, Paper and pinholes, 21 x 29.7 cm each 

https://www.jmberlin.de/en/exhibition-access-kafka