Timotheus Vermeulen appointed SPRING Festival Fellow at Centre for the Humanities
Cultural theorist Timotheus Vermeulen (Radboud University Nijmegen) has been appointed as the SPRING Performing Arts Festival fellow at the Centre for the Humanities (CfH). Vermeulen’s work centres around contemporary aesthetics and art, including film and television. He will be visiting Utrecht during the festival on 19-28 May. His fellowship is also part of the Utrecht University Lustrum Residencies programme at the CfH.
Vermeulen is an assistant professor in Cultural Theory at the Radboud University Nijmegen, where he also co-directs the Centre for New Aesthetics. "Timotheus Vermeulen is undoubtedly one of those brilliant young minds that pursue rigorous cultural analysis, while connecting contemporary culture and research with broader questions of politics, art and society" - says CfH director Rosi Braidotti.
Perhaps most renowned for proposing ‘metamodernism’ as an intervention in the post-modernism debate, and the concept of ‘new depthiness’ as a characteristic of contemporary aesthetics, Vermeulen’s work engages closely with the questions that are crucial for arts and critical cultural theory today.
Bridging academia and the arts
During his stay Vermeulen will participate in the academic programme at the Humanities Faculty as well as SPRING Academy, SPRING’s contextual programme for young artists and students. Inspired by this year’s theme of SPRING Academy ‘Aesthetics & Activism’ Vermeulen will engage in working sessions with the participants discussing both his concept of metamodernism as well as the political and the arts. On 20 May 2016 he will be one of the speakers in the City Symposium ‘Aesthetics, Activism and the City’.
"As international festival, SPRING brings together artworks and people from all over the world and from many different contexts. SPRING Academy is our open invitation for this vibrant mix of creative minds to engage in conversation about art and the world today; we are excited that Timotheus Vermeulen will join us in this exchange" – says Rainer Hofmann, director of SPRING.
The Fellowship forms part of a larger project in the CfH’s ‘Academic and Civic’ programme, which aims at connecting the university and the city of Utrecht. More specifically, by promoting the arts and culture as crucial factors in constructing a socially sustainable urban and academic environment, the programme also aims to stress the social responsibility of artists, scholars and the media as a shared priority for both our university and the city.
As Festival Fellow Timotheus Vermeulen will participate in the SPRING Academy (the opening lecture of T. Vermeulen on May 20 is also open for UU students) and give a talk during a city symposium on 'Aesthetics, Activism and the City' on May 20.
Utrecht University Lustrum 2016
This fellowship is also part of the Lustrum Residencies programme, set up to celebrate the 76th Utrecht University Lustrum: 380 Years Bright Minds, Better Future. Together with students, staff, alumni, local and regional partners the university is organising the lustrum programme 'Create, Connect & Celebrate!'.
See more at: www.uu.nl/lustrum