The Earth is Flat: Interview with Miguel and Julian

The Earth is Flat (Ziemia jest Płaska) is a project by Studio Julian Hetzel in collaboration with Stary National Theater Krakow (PL)
The premiere is on 18.10.2024 at the Stary National Theater Krakow.

Read more about the project here

This interview was originally published in the booklet accompanying the performance. Published by Stary National Theater Krakow, 2024.

Aleksandra Jakubczak: What was the starting point for The Earth is Flat? And what was the research behind it?

Julian Hetzel: The starting point for this piece was our fascination with polarization in society, where you increasingly see a conflict between different groups. You see this happen in the whole of Europe and perhaps even in the whole world. We have lost the possibility to actually go in dialogue with each other.
Our research was into emotions, more specifically the relation between emotions and politics. Truth and the construction of reality plays a big role in this system. We understood that, while we all look at the same problems and the same world, we have very different opinions, perspectives and conclusions, up to the point where it starts to clash. We thought that’s interesting and we decided to make a piece about these processes.

Miguel A Melgares: When we came up with the idea of The Earth is Flat we came to realize how social media are currently affecting discourses, political agendas and the crisis in the value system that we are witnessing. The concept of doubt is brought to the center of the political discourse, while the concept of truth has become incredibly flexible. On social media it is clear how people use doubts as a way of imposing their own political agendas. This is something that is really at the center of The Earth is Flat.

JH: Just to emphasize: doubt, hate or anger are all emotions. My starting point is to research how emotions and politics are connected. Why and how have emotions become so dominant in political discourse? And social media surely feeds into this.

AJ: What are the main topics in this piece? I understand that the research leading up to The Earth is Flat was very important for the process. Can you tell us a bit more about the topics and motives that emerged?

JH: A crucial motive is the construction of the truth. Who has the ownership of knowledge? Who owns the narrative? Who constructs and designs the narratives that are connected to certain ideologies? Usually there are three main players that inform the way reality is constructed: science, politics and religion. It is fascinating how different representatives of, for instance, the church or politics or science claim the one and only truth. And then comes a new school, a new ideology, a new religion, a new scientific perspective that proposes another reality with a new and possibly contradicting position. This new position questions what was before.

MM: We also talk about worldviews. A worldview is a specific mode of approaching the construction of reality. Different schools have different ways of looking to the world and this will shape who we are and how we behave as a society.

JH: Basically it is different names for the same thing: a worldview, an ideology…

AJ: As you mentioned, the title of the piece refers to the Flat Earth theory. How do you use the theory in this performance: do you use it literally, or as a metaphor to show a mechanism?

MM: We use it metaphorically in the work. It served as a tool to understand different power structures.

JH: In a way The Earth is Flat is a title, but it’s also a leitmotif or a compass because it points to something that I mentioned before about the succession of different ideologies. It is very possible that there will be players in politics, economics or any other field that will propose a new reality. This reality can be as groundbreaking as the one proposed by Galileo Galilei or Copernicus. Basically they were saying: “everything you believe in is wrong.”

The title The Earth is Flat also refers to the way our values, what we believe in, is relative. In a way, it is also a prophecy or a warning that whatever we believe is worth fighting for, might be overturned by another system.

MM: This reminds me of a piece by a Polish artist, Gosia Wdowik about the fight for abortion rights in Poland, She Was a Friend of Someone Else. There was this sentence: “rights that are given, are not given forever.” Reactionary tendencies are growing stronger and dominate politics in many countries. It is much easier to follow simplicity than complexity, and that is what these tendencies are based on: oversimplification of reality.

AJ: You mentioned the role politics, religion and science play in shaping worldviews. What about the role of art? What role does art and artists play in these games of changing narratives? After all, the theater is all about proposing narratives.

JH: I am fascinated by the idea of appropriation. As Miguel just mentioned, conservative and populist movements managed to appropriate concepts like freedom of speech, alternative, being radical, being anti-establishment. They managed to claim these terms for their movements. The same terms used to belong to the counterculture movements that resisted conservative values. This revolutionary spirit is now being appropriated by conservatives and nationalists who manage to twist and bend these concepts.

Within this question of appropriation, art can (and should) be radically speculative (in a way science or religion cannot). I think artists should reclaim the post-truth space of bending truth, of playing and speculating with what is true and what is fake, to create alternative narratives and scenarios, to rewrite history and to go to places where we have not been yet because they do not exist yet. This is the power of art.

In art, we can propose scenarios that cross certain limits, we can do things on stage or the performers can create images of something on stage that we are not allowed to do in reality – luckily. This is the artistic freedom that we have in theater. It is necessary and important to reclaim artistic freedom and to use it to go to extreme places, to show things that are maybe disturbing, shocking and confusing. Within this safe space of the theater, we need to reclaim the power of art to negotiate what society is not yet ready to do in real life.

MM: In the last decades, I think that art in the western world has been so focused on identity politics, the politics of care, with inclusivity and safe spaces, that somehow it has forgotten the political agency of art. Safe spaces are needed, but I think we also need to create brave spaces and spaces in which we can say certain ideas out loud. Sometimes the artistic field seems so busy with their own problems, that they are turning their backs to society. I think it is good to turn back towards society and to speak clearly from the stage.

JH: Just to add to that: I consider myself an activist. I am a political being and the tool that I have chosen to bring about change in society is theater, is art. I use theater as a tool to transform reality and to promote change. I use art as a weapon to challenge the system. Even though it is probably not the most efficient and not the most direct tool or weapon.

AJ: So you believe in the power of theatre as a tool for social change. Can you elaborate on that? Touring so much internationally, you must have quite an experience in how it can work in different contexts.

JH: I think that the work that we have done in the past 10 years has changed people’s lives. I have witnessed that happening again and again. I am not sure if we can reproduce that effect or impact with all the pieces, but in certain moments I have seen things move and that gives me trust to continue going in this direction.

MM: In this context it is also important to see how we use provocation to raise social awareness. Julian’s work usually creates a certain friction and this friction usually also brings media attention. This is one of the few things that we can do to cross the bubble of the arts and have a wider range of action. Otherwise, our message would stay in the small bubble of people who paid to see the show. It is amazing when it crosses the art bubble and suddenly there is an interview in a national newspaper to speak about the social problem that we have addressed in our work. This way we can have a wider impact and this is really interesting.

JH: We also consider PR and marketing an integral part of our artistic practice. I studied visual communication and design and Miguel has a background in Visual Arts. For me it is a part of my toolbox to also be actively involved in making a photoshoot for a poster because it connects to the piece and it makes the piece enter a print medium. This helps us break through the wall of the theater to connect to the people on the streets.

AJ: I would like to get back to what you said about provocation. Julian, you are known as a provocateur. Is artistic provocation a way to reach outside the theater and get attention from journalists, politicians, etc.?

JH: Provocation is a strategy. I always say that friction creates shape and that you can choose the tools to do so. In sculpture for instance, if you want to shape a stone, you can use a soft tool like water to create a shape over the years right; but you can also use a knife, a hammer or explosive. What kind of impact do you want to achieve? I look at the world and with each project I understand society a little bit better. But I also look for ethical friction. I try to carefully look at society to understand what are the pressure points, what are the hot spots, what are the subjects that will come up in a year.

AJ: You have a very particular way of working as a director. Could you tell us more about your artistic practice? How do you approach a topic to create and develop your material?

MM: We don’t come from classical, traditional theater. As Julian mentioned before, we came from the visual arts, visual communication and music, and we have another way of working. Julian and I have been working together for a very long time now and I think that we can describe our way of working as a process-based mode of working. In this way of working, you start from an idea – a concept or a draft — and then proceed circulating around it, feeding it, letting it grow. Slowly we understand where the sensibilities are. So usually from the original idea till the end result there is a long journey. A lot of things are left behind in the process. What is clear is that the project is growing and transforming through practice.

JH: I worked as a drummer in an electronic music band. We generated our material through jamming and playing together in the space. Everybody brought their instrument. Maybe somebody had an idea, but it is only one small segment, and then other people contributed to that. This is also how we work with the performers. I never know what I am doing before I start the process.

I always work on the basis of small images. I don’t come from text, I come from images, so I mainly generate images or situations. In the case of National Stary Theatre, I was also inspired by the space itself. When I saw the rotating stage, I fell in love with the idea of never-ending rotation. I decided to use the stage as an actor and as an active element. We use it as an energy: the world is turning and it never stops.

When we started rehearsing before the summer, I asked the actors to jam and to play based on certain conditions that we create. Out of that, new images appeared.

Only later on in the process the artistic team joins in. I invite Miguel, as dramaturg, and Sodja Lotker, our artistic advisor, to analyze the images we created. We work on the possible meanings of these images and try to find what works.

MM: It is like an editorial process. There is something about collaging, sampling and editing. There is a lot of technologies around music that somehow influence the process of making. Everybody involved in the project has an artistic role. People are not just executing, but they bring their own thoughts and ideas. Collective writing for example is something that is really part of our way of working. Everybody has access to the text and – unfortunately for the performers – the text is not ready until the week of the premiere. But this is something that we always inform the people about beforehand.

JH: I realize, it is also a challenge for theaters like the Stary to work with artists like us, and vice versa. Every day we are negotiating how to create the conditions for me to work the way I am used to, while at the same time maintaining a sense of sanity and control over the process. Yet, at the end, we are all working together on the same goal.

AJ: This also proves that the theater is the tool to make this kind of dialogue possible. The piece is coming into being.

J: Yes, the Earth is still turning.