Event: How did we end up here?
Tuesday 29 September 2026
20:00h
Theater Utrecht (Boorstraat 107, 3513 SE Utrecht, NL)
Tickets: €10.00 | €12.50
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We invite you to How did we end up here? on 29 September at Theater Utrecht: a conversation between Julian Hetzel, Prof. Dr. Maaike Bleeker and Dr Patricia de Vries on the connections between thought and action, process and performance, politics and imagination.
The programme is based on the ongoing research project Der Lauf der Dinge, a collaboration between Studio Julian Hetzel and theatre scholar Prof. Dr. Maaike Bleeker on the relationship between (political) thinking and theatre. Together, they trace, investigate, map, and question the movements of artistic thinking: how do ideas emerge, collide, transform and eventually materialise as theatre?
This evening is an invitation to enter the machinery of artistic research, where one question inevitably sets another in motion.
Speakers: Julian Hetzel, Prof. Dr. Maaike Bleeker, Dr Patricia de Vries
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Maaike Bleeker’s work combines approaches from the arts and performance studies with insights from philosophy, media theory and cognitive science. Much of her research focuses on processes of embodied and technologically mediated perception and transmission, with a special interest in the relationship between technology, movement and embodied perception and cognition. Current research subjects include social robotics, spectacular astronomy and the intersection of performance studies and space studies, posthuman performativity, corporeal literacy, digital archiving of artistic work, and artistic creation processes. Since 2022, Maaike has been head of the Department of Media & Culture Sciences at Utrecht University. Maaike will present us with an evolution of scenography and theater tech, its relation to the media arts, and share insights from her own research and forthcoming book.
Patricia de Vries leads the interdisciplinary research group Art & Spatial Praxis at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. This group explores how artistic and social practices intervene in social, digital, and institutional spaces. Drawing from feminist geography, Black studies, environmental humanities, and critical theory, the research group examines the dynamics of power that determine how space is produced and contested. One of the group’s initiatives, the open artistic research platform Plot(ting), investigates alternative forms of spatial praxis and relations. Previously, de Vries was an assistant professor of philosophy at Maastricht University.
Julian Hetzel works as a performance maker and visual artist. He creates performative experiences with a political dimension and a documentary approach for theaters and galleries internationally. Born in the Black Forest (Germany), he studied at the Bauhaus University in Weimar with a focus on visual communication and graduated in 2013 from DAS Arts Amsterdam, an artistic research laboratory for new forms of theatre and performance art. Studio Julian Hetzel’s work has received widespread international recognition through critical acclaim, festival invitations, and major awards. The company’s latest production, Three Times Left is Right, was selected for the 2026 Berliner Theatertreffen, one of the most prestigious theatre festivals in the German-speaking world, showcasing the ten most outstanding productions of the year.