El Castillo

El Castillo is the official title of Jorge Méndez Blake's project (here) with a wall of stones "deformed" by a book. Most people know this "visual" under the name 'The Impact of a Book'.

So good and deep!

'El Castillo' is not a random book. It's Frans Kafka's unfinished book 'Das Schloss' (1926). Published against the express wish of Kafka! Wikipedia: "The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal."

The German title 'Das Schloss' is a homonym that can be translated as 'The Castle/ Palace' but also as 'The Lock'. Next to that it's phonetically close to 'Der Schluss' that can be translated as 'The Conclusion/ End.

I don't want to talk about:

• The impact of alienation on stones
• The impact of bureaucracy on stones
• The impact of controlling systems on stones
• The impact of an unobtainable goal on stones
• What is the metaphor behind, under, above, ... - there must be more - stones?
• Is image 'impact' the same as 'deformation'?
• The right spot of the book is important. On most places it would have had no impact at all
• Observation that 'the book' has on the biggest part of the wall no impact at all
• Could it have been another book too? What category tag should we give these books?

I need to talk about storytelling and framing in our time and age. Big media. Big fake news. Big lying. Big wikipedia. Big brother. Big TV. Big news. Big government. For me it feels as if the free spirits on our planet are slowly loosing grip and steady ground. As if they slowly become extinct. As if there is no longer ground and space where they feel love, have their ups and downs and can grow up as free spirits. As if there are no longer ears and eyes who are sensible for their subjective and relativating words. As if everyone is looking for objective and final words ... not realizing that that is a false and most dangerous dream. As if no one is realizing that there are only subjective and relative words. As if no one reads books from free spirits.

Why so much fake news and many lies? Why is the sky blue? What is a free spirit for his- or himself? Why do I love the radiation of the sun on my skin in this time of the year so much? Why 'why'?