KAFKA’S SISTER’S CASTLE

"Kafka's sister's castle" by Alex Chomicz is a mock documentary consisting of an interview with Kafka's angst-ridden, chain smoking niece.

She relates the curious history of Kafka's sister's (her mother's) misguided act of homage to Kafka's book of 1924, "The Castle" ("Der Schloss"), which led her to build the castle situated on the Gold Coast, since transformed into an amusement park.

Kafka's niece tries to gain entry to the castle in an effort to cathartically cast off her oppressive past The work is a clever and witty satire of the many bizarre legacies from our European heritage which have become part of our contemporary consumer landscape (ie castles).

Its biting wit is particularly directed at the Gold Coast, as the bastion of everything fake, materialistic, and superficial.

Equally stereotyped is the consumptive, heavily accented Hungarian niece.

Chomicz' work suggests that our values and concepts of both ‘high' and ‘low' culture (whether we be sophisticated Kafka readers or Fairy Tale Castle tourists) are filtered through cliches and stereotypes.

Even our personal quests to cast off our conditioning is a cliched activity.

Nevertheless, the humour of the work, its low budget ‘cheapness', and the obvious amount of delight with which it was produced, over-ride any lasting impression of nihilism.

by Beth Jackson.

February 1996.