Steff Geelen

Steff is part of the Poetry Circle Nowhere collective, and works on the Enter New Babylon project as a writer and spoken word artist. For Enter New Babylon she teams up with designer Aina Roca.

A vision on the future

Steff personally finds it difficult to imagine the future. Individually and in Steff’s work as an artist they anticipate the future all the time, but somehow it remains dark and unknown territory and they shy away from it. This means that in Steff’s work they often focus on the past, on memories, build on what has already been and the result of those processes in the present. Therefore Steff always finds it inspiring if someone can imagine and envision a possible, hopeful future.

Two readings 

In Steff’s opinion there can be two readings of the work of Constant. The first one is perhaps a bit negative, as it portrays Constant as a naïve dreamer, someone who shies away from the present to inhabit a picture of an impossible, utopian future.

The second reading however of Utopian thinkers such as Constant, shows perseverance and vision. Dreaming in spite of the destructive present, dreaming as a way of critique. Queer theorist Jose Estaban Munoz created a term for this: Utopian longing. This longing can make us realise that this world right here is not enough and that indeed something is missing. It allows us, he says, to look beyond the quagmire of the present. In this reading, Constant dares to believe in something more than an exploitative, vampiric, capitalist here and now, and actively tried to translate this desire into his work. 

previously

In 2018–2019 Steff took part in the trajectory for young theatre makers at Likeminds- De Factory. In 2020 they were selected among 14 other (international) artists for the 3Package Deal, a development grant from the Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten that helps them develop, amongst others, a new story about scars and a theatre production about the life of objects.