C: You have oftentimes admitted that Central Europe and its culture became an object of interest for you during your studies. What was it specifically that drew your interest?
QB: Having arrived at the Philadelphia College of Art at the age of 18 and coming from a life of exemplary wholesomeness, we were suddenly confronted with an exhibition of Polish posters from the 1960s. Unpronounceable names such as Starowieyski, Cieślewicz, Lenica, Zamecznik, Tomaszewski and Fangor stood before us like an impenetrable wall but their effect must have concentrated a certain restlessness in us which gave birth to an immediate and intense curiosity towards that part of the world known vaguely as Eastern and Central Europe. Above all else, it was these poster makers who had become inadvertent messengers announcing an unheard of constellation of artists, authors, filmmakers and musicians who in the profound conciseness of these posters, were suggesting a universe of theatre, opera, cinema and ballet that was being articulated by a visual language which was unashamedly esoteric and yet profoundly beautiful and evocative.
Simultaneously and more importantly, this led us to discovering Kafka but this was only after we had inadvertently read an article in the Swiss journal Graphis that described a certain poster as being ‘Kafkaesque’ and of course not even knowing who Kafka was, the word itself utterly galvanised us. We quizzically asked the librarian what ‘Kafkaesque’ meant and he simply said: look it up in the dictionary. And we did so immediately, but not surprisingly the word didn't exist (at least in a Philadelphia dictionary back in c. 1966).
However, within the space of days in that very same library, we then found Kafka's Diaries in an aisle marked with the magnificent letter ‘K’ and, absconding with them immediately, saturated ourselves in them over the next few months. And not long after, we discovered a photographic edition in this very same library of silky black-and-white images of Prague by Karel Plicka, so when Kafka wrote about Prague, we could envision hearing his footsteps as he walked through the precision of Plicka’s photographs.
However it was from a cinematographic contribution that we saw the Czech film Joseph Kilian by Pavel Juráček which sealed in our imaginations how the elements of the ‘Kafkaesque’ were being manifested and embraced in this film by this mysterious city called Prague. And then like a small avalanche, there flowed the discoveries of the musics of Janáček, Mahler, Berg, Bartók, Debussy and Bruckner which further complemented these couplings and suddenly we realised that we were in the very heart of Central Europe. Everything could radiate outwards from these constellations such was the potential that had been mapped out by a mere dozen or so of these Polish posters.