Watching: The Wake

Overview

The Wake is the title of a large-scale multimedia project, the main element of which is an eight-hour long silent movie. The film is based on Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (London 1939), a limit-transgressing, perhaps even limit-dissolving book that not only transgresses the limits of what literature is and is capable of, but inscribes transgressions on almost all conceivable levels. It is at the same time dream book, history book and necrology. It is almost impossible to determine whether we are dealing with a long poem, a prose narrative or a piece of drama.