Theatre director, set designer and visual artist Manuel Gerst transforms Kafka’s famous story “The Metamorphosis” into a poetic reflection on disability. We remember: one morning, Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself in the body of a gigantic vermin. It soon becomes clear that this strange creature is an obstacle to the family’s happiness. In the end, only destruction remains—the completed transformation, death.

Manuel Gerst, who has previously had ice hockey players skate their lonely laps through a museum space, interprets Kafka’s masterpiece in a radically idiosyncratic way. The result is his theatrical coup “The Metamorphosis”—a mixture of radical theatre, happening and social sculpture, presented at Kaserne Basel on 28 March as part of “It’s The Real Thing”.

The centrepiece of this work—the vermin—is exhibited at Museum Tinguely before and after the performance. Before and after its metamorphosis.