Unsettling Interpretations Beyond the Theatrical Stage
Kseniya Khamiankova
Vilnius Academy of Arts
It's a photographic installation based on Franz Kafka's novella The Metamorphosis. It is not an illustration of the text and not a retelling of Gregor Samsa's story. It transfers the central state of the novella - the experience of a person who has become a stranger in their own home - from the literary page into a real physical space.I am interested in moments when one medium begins to act by the rules of another - when photography works by the logic of cinema and theatre, when a wall starts to function as a page, when a corridor starts to function as time. I do not want to explain anxiety. I want to build the conditions in which the viewer can meet it on their own - or meet something else entirely. The work does not give a ready-made reading. It gives space for reflection. The project was shot in an abandoned apartment on Bokšto Street in the Old Town of Vilnius. The apartment had stood empty for many years: peeling walls, dirty windows, Soviet furniture, the smell of stopped time. I did not need to build a set - the space was already speaking the language of Kafka.