CTRL+C

We have grown accustomed to the outsourcing of war, of love, of care, of hate, of peace. Now it is time to outsource art! In 'CTRL+C', acclaimed theatre director Julian Hetzel highlights the tenacity with which a continent denies its own downfall.

Ctrl+C begins with a clear proposition: Julian Hetzel commissions a Chinese artist to create a portrait of  Europe — as a stage performance — made in China. What might such a portrait look like? How would it be produced? Ctrl+C pushes the logic of artistic creation to the edge of absurdity, where the absurd becomes political, and the political reveals its poetic charge. 

For centuries, Europe has positioned itself as the Original: author of modernity, guardian of democracy, sole owner of moral authority. Yet behind this self-image of cultural superiority, a deepening insecurity emerges, rooted in the erosion of its global standing. 

Europe denies this reality. A golden past — part myth, part projection — is endlessly rehearsed and performed. Nostalgia hardens into obsession, tragically mistaken for a viable political strategy for the future. Is this denial mere ignorance, or rather a coping mechanism, an expression of grief in the face of its own decline? 

Ctrl+C addresses Europe’s inability to keep pace with shifting geopolitical realities, and its resistance to confronting its own downfall — the slow exhaustion of a grand idea. Meanwhile, the spectre of old regimes is re-emerging from the shadows.