Julian Hetzel

Julian Hetzel works as a performance maker, visual artist and musician. He creates performative experiences for theaters and galleries that have a political dimension and a documentary approach.

Julian Hetzel is born in the Black Forest (Germany) and is currently based in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). He studied at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar with a focus on visual communication. In 2013, he graduated from DAS Theatre (Amsterdam), an artistic research laboratory for new forms of theater and of performing arts. Between 2014-2016, Hetzel was an associate artist at SPRING Performing Arts Festival in Utrecht. Since 2014, Hetzel has been collaborating with Frascati Theater in Amsterdam as a local co-producer. In 2016, Hetzel founded his own organization ‘Stichting Ism & Heit’ and ‘Studio Julian Hetzel’ in Utrecht to realize and produce his artistic work. In 2017, his work titled ‘The Automated Sniper’ received the VSCD Mimeprijs. Since 2018, Hetzel works in close collaboration with the Gent-based art center CAMPO (Belgium). Their first joint production, ‘All Inclusive’ (2018), has been selected for the Nederlands Theater Festival 2019. In 2019, Hetzel presented three works at the Venice Biennale Teatro. The performance installation ‘SELF’ was selected as the Dutch national entry at the Prague Quadrennial in 2019. Since 2021, Studio Julian Hetzel receives structural funding from the city of Utrecht and from the Fonds Podiumkunsten.

His works are produced and presented internationally, including Biennale Teatro, Venice (Italy); steirischer herbst, Graz (Austria); Theater der Welt, Mannheim (Germany); Impulse Theater Festival (Germany); Santarcangelo Festival (Italy); brut, Vienna (Austria); Espacios Revelados, Buenos Aires (Argentina); Adelaide Festival (Australia); Kaaitheater, Brussels (Belgium); Vooruit, Gent (Belgium); Biennale Bern (Switzerland); Belluard Bollwerk, Fribourg (Switzerland); Prague Quadrennial ( Czech Republic); SPIELART, Munich (Germany); Festival Theaterformen, Hannover (Germany); SAAL Biennial Tallinn (Estonia); Actoral, Marseille (France); Festival Impatience, Paris (France); NEXT Festival, Paris (France); MMCA–National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (Korea); National Theatre, Riga (Latvia); Nederlands Theater Festival, Amsterdam (The Netherlands); SPRING Performing Arts Festival, Utrecht (The Netherlands), Noorderzon Performing Arts & Society Festival, Groningen (The Netherlands); Theatherfestival Boulevard, Hertogenbosch (The Netherlands); Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven (The Netherlands); Malta Festival Poznań (Poland); South East Dance (UK); and Transform Festival, Leeds (UK), among others.

Julian Hetzel is a participant of the Tailor-made Fellowships program of Οnassis AiR 2022-23.