By Rachel Lois
In the last days of his life, Franz Kafka could not speak
due to tuberculosis of the larynx. He was reduced to communicating to those who
were closest to him via short written sentences or ‘hints’, otherwise known as Conversation
Slips. Along with the enduring visions his novels have given us - a man who has
done nothing wrong fights for his life against a bizarre court that sits in
almost every attic in the world (The Trial 1914), a machine quite literally
writes condemned people to death (In the Penal Colony 1919), a man tries forever
to get into a mysterious castle (The Castle 1922) - are his Conversation Slips...
What was Kafka saying and to whom? What paper or pen did he use? What does ‘ Lemonade
it was all so boundless.’ mean? Or rather, favouring
the more opaque, WHAT remains of one – sided conversation? HOW the existential aphorism? HOW BIG the slip? Intrigued by all
this and more, Rachel Lois has transposed a selection of these slips to Twitter;
as 140 character endeavour, research and tribute.
Tweeting
Conversation Slips by Rachel Lois Clapham features in #tweetart at Westgate
Studios, Wakefield. The work in part relates to the LemonMelon commission ‘ lemonade everything was so infinite.’
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