Leo
Kees

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What does it mean to "feel" European?

And when do we begin to "belong" to a place?

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HOW TO BE EUROPEAN? is a series of conversations developed as part of the artistic research for IMAGINE: EUROPE, a physical lecture-performance premiering at Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus in 2027 and developed in collaboration with partners including Dschungel Wien (AT)  and LWL museums and cultural institutions.

The project begins with a personal question: I was born and raised in a former European colony in South America and came to Europe at the age of twenty. My family came from Europe; yet culturally and legally, I arrived here as a foreigner. More than twenty-five years later, this place has become part of how I understand myself.

But... when and how did that happen?

And what does it actually mean to be—or to feel—European?

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THE CONVERSATIONS

For the Podcast HOW TO BE EUROPEAN? I meet people with very different biographies, professions, generations and relationships to Europe: migrants and non-migrants, artists, academics, activists, politicians, professionals and citizens whose lives offer other ways of looking at the same question.

The conversations are not intended to produce one definition of European identity. Instead, I want to collect different experiences and sometimes even contradictory perspectives.

Questions may include:

What does being European mean to you? When do you feel European—and when don't you? What distinguishes European from national identity? When can someone who migrated to Europe begin to consider themselves European? What do you value about Europe? What needs to change? And what kind of Europe would you like to live in ten years from now?

The conversations can take place in English, German or Spanish, in person or online, and usually last no longer than one hour.

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A BEGINNER'S MIND

My role is less to make statements than to listen, ask and try to understand.

Alongside my artistic practice, I am trained as a systemic coach. I use systemic questions as part of the interview process: not to prove a position, but to enter, as far as possible, the reality from which another person sees the world. 

I approach these conversations with a beginner's mind. I allow myself not to understand something, to ask for explanations and not to take familiar terms such as Europe, identity, migration or belonging for granted.

This is not a history examination and participants do not need to be experts on European politics. Academic knowledge interests me, but so does lived experience. A personal memory, a contradiction or the experience of arriving somewhere can sometimes open a question that statistics or theory cannot.  When we enter the realm of subjective and emotional experience—dimensions that resist measurement—an artistic approach and sensitivity can become as valuable as a scientific one, if not more so. This is precisely where I see the potential of artistic research: to engage with aspects of belonging and identity that cannot easily be quantified, but can be experienced, narrated and shared.

This combination of biographical experience and academic research has long been part of my artistic process. When developing new work, I read, interview specialists and bring research into dialogue with personal histories. HOW TO BE EUROPEAN? makes that process public: a collection of voices that will inform IMAGINE: EUROPE while also existing as a conversation in its own right.

The intention is constructive rather than declarative: to understand how Europe is actually lived before imagining what it could become. 

More about my artistic practice and research can be found here.