The Castle
In this particular piece Pavel Buchler uses a quotation from Franz Kafka’s 'The Castle', a quintessential text about estrangement, labyrinthine bureaucracy, and its control systems. The short section chosen by Buchler recounts the resentment with which the locals suffer Josef K’s presence in the village. It includes the words of a village landlady: “You are not from the Castle, you are not from the village, you aren’t anything. Or rather, unfortunately, you are something, a stranger, a man who isn’t wanted ...”. 'The Castle' is about the struggle to fit in and its failure. Booming out through the old loud-speakers, the text recalls old factory or street propaganda announcements, this one declaring that assimilation is impossible and the stranger will always remain on the outside. Kafka's 'The Castle' was published in 1936 in Prague (same year as the production of the Marconi loud-speakers in Italy), a time of growing fascism and depression in Europe leading up to the second world war (1939-1945).
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