Human Story - A Glitch in the Matrix

Art montage animation. 25 seconds.

 

"Everyone carries a room about inside them.

This fact can be proved by means of the sense of hearing.

If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears

and listens, say at night, when everything round about

is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling

of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall."

- Franz Kafka, "Blue Octavo Notebooks" (1917-19).

 

Is there any more enigmatic writer in the early 20th century than the great Bohemian Franz Kafka (1883-1924)? Kafka's worked opened the door to questions about existence and freedom as his world lurched from one world war to the next (which mercifully he did not live to see). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka

 

Inspired by these questions of Kafka, contemporary composer Max Richter has recorded a great double album, "The Blue Notebook" (Deutsche Grammophon, 2018). To back up my images of the disassembled self in modernity, I have included the words of Kafka narrated by Tilda Swinton.

 

You may want to watch this short animation several times.

Done