Unfolding Kafka Festival

Unfolding Kafka is a biennial festival for contemporary performing arts in Bangkok. It was founded by the Thai choreographer Jitti Chompee. He was inspired to establish a festival platform for contemporary dance in Thailand, using ‘Kafka’ as a cipher for conceptual and experimental approaches, after seeing “Der Bau” by Isabelle Schad and Laurent Goldring at Tanzplattform 2014 in Hamburg, Germany.

The festival embarks upon an exploration of Franz Kafka’s grotesque universe, which blurs the line between the human and non-human and interweaves different modes of reflection on Otherness through humanized creatures. Building upon existing scholarship and artistic creations, the festival will investigate Kafka’s work through multiple forms of abstract and conceptual performance art, challenging Thai audiences to respond to unconventional and provocative interpretations of Kafka’s works. The enduring fascination with Kafka’s body of work, style and mysterious characters is a vast resource for continued investigation and interpretation.