“Make Art Great Again: Undisciplinary Approaches to Doing Art Politically” – Julian Hetzel

Julian Hetzel by Jakob Hoff

“I am German, white, and catholic baptised; that’s a complex starter kit,” observes theatre maker Julian Hetzel in a press release for his creation Schuldfabrik (2017). Hetzel is well aware of his privileged position, and his observation is not a complaint. Rather, it addresses the complexity of being implicated and how this affects his work as a critical maker. „I’m much more part of the problem – than of a possible solution…“, Hetzel continues.

In this session, Julian Hetzel and Maaike Bleeker trace how critical awareness of being implicated informs Hetzel’s work and how the medium of performance offers a means to think through what Hannah Arendt describes as “the vicarious responsibility for things we have not done.”  This dialogue is part of their ongoing research titled Lauf der Dinge.

Julian Hetzel is an artist and performance maker who creates crossover art projects in which he critically analyses the contradictions of Western culture and what he calls ‘the big behinds’—the dilemmas between ethical principles and economic interests. His work is produced and shown across Europe and abroad, including the Venice Biennale (IT), SPRING Festival (NL), Dublin Theater Festival (IE), Santarcangelo Festival (IT), Adelaide Festival (AU), Actoral Marseille (FR), Sirenos Festival Vilnius (LT), Tampere Festival (FI), Spielart Festival (DE) and Boulevard Festival Den Bosch (NL). Four of his shows were selected for the Nederlands Theaterfestival and during the last festival Hetzel and Ntando Cele received the directing award for their creation SPAfrica.

Maaike Bleeker is a professor of Performance, Science, and Technology in the Department of Media and Culture at Utrecht University.  In her work, she looks at what happens in making and watching performances of various kinds (within the theatre and outside), how humans interact with other humans as well as with non-human agents like robots or instruments, and how experiences and ways of understanding come about in such interactions in the theatre, in daily life, and scientific research. She is PI of Acting Like a Robot: Theatre as Testbed for the Robot Revolution (NWO Smart Culture ClSC.KC.205) and Dramaturgy for Devices: Designing Sustainable Relations with Robots and Smart Objects (NWA 1518.22.080). Her most recent monograph Doing Dramaturgy. Thinking Through Practice (2023) was published by Palgrave.

You can register for this seminar here. This session is part of the Transmission in Motion seminar (2024-2025): “Implicatedness” To stay updated with more seminar sessions, please subscribe to our newsletter.