De kuur
2017
Book, 21.6 x 13.6 cm, 276 p., language : Dutch, publisher : Em. Querido Publishers, ISBN : 9789021406114.
Materials: ink, paper
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. B 2029/97).
Literary synopsis
De kuur is an unsettling literary soap-noir about a family trip to the Magic Mountain. Businessman Yves Altman has been mesmerized by the famous novel The Magic Mountain his whole life. His house, where he lives with his four adult children from two marriages oozes the spirit of Art Nouveau. With his new girlfriend and his children he travels to Davos, to the real Magic Mountain where Thomas Mann wrote his novel. Yves loves the book and not sharing this by his family is not an option. From the beginning of the trip things go different than planned, everybody mixes up place and time. Undefinable powers seem to be in charge. Yves has a hidden agenda and the oppressed desires of his girlfriend and his children create a dilemma. Is it possible to go back? De kuur is a search for identity in modern corrupt economic times, a dark sexy fairy tale and a family saga about love in all forms.
Relation of the novel to the artist’s practice
The way Emily Kocken works as an artist is very similar to her method as an author. She researches thoroughly and relates bits and pieces of her life to the fiction new 'thing' she creates. It has to be intertwined, otherwise it will not stick. Some say that every novel is an autobiography of the author. Kocken agrees to a certain extent. Not to be taken to literal, she believes that her work is always an expression of her soul and its cyclic development. On the website dekuur.nl many images of her journey can be found, and easily taken off, with titles attached.
Authorship: Artist Author.
Creative Strategy: Rewriting Existing Novel.
Genre: Comedy, Gothic, Romance.
Publishing: Publishing House.
Theme: Animism, Capitalism, Childhood, Class, Community, Crisis, Death, Drugs, Ecstasy, Family Secrets, Feminism, Ghosts, Homosexuality, Identity, Illness, Landscape, Love, Mystery, Neurosis, Obsession, Paranoia, Parody, Rituals, Secret Societies, Seduction, Sex, States of the Self, Travels, Utopian Worlds.
