Rosefeldt's 'Euphoria' is one of the most impressive things I ever experienced. 

What if 200 of the greatest thinkers and poets this planet has known in recent centuries were just one of us? An ordinary stranger on a bus, or your taxi driver, or a skater? Or a singing tiger in a supermarket? Julian Rosefeldt makes that thought audible, tangible and almost tangible in the mega-installation 'Euphoria' at the Holland Festival. It is one of the most impressive things I have experienced in recent years.

Julian Rosefeldt, that's the man who after the press preview, Thursday 8 June, very beseechingly asked if we had any questions. Questions? Hundreds, but not especially for him. For him, I would only kneel down. Because he has such an insane talent for turning Very Big Thoughts into Very Big Art, which still resonates deeply with little people like yours truly.

Cate Blanchett

The first time I experienced him at the Holland Festival was at the equally impressive installation Manifesto. On thirteen seemingly separate screens, we saw Cate Blanchett debating Artist Manifestos in ever-changing situations. That was already beautiful, but even more beautiful was that those seemingly separately started videos were hypersynchronous: each time a screaming climax emerged in which everything was unison.

The technique is used differently in Euphoria, but to no less overwhelming effect. No loose wandering screens in an exhibition setting: Rosefeldt lets you enter a gigantic round and high room, where a central screen draws all eyes towards it. But all around in that dark space is an entire chorus of New York youth, life-size. They seem to be standing with you in space, but they are projections. Above those young people: five drum kits, played by the best drummers this era has to offer. Also projections.

Natural scenes

What happens in that space is hard to describe: the film on the central screen contains seemingly natural scenes: a taxi driver with a stiff customer, homeless people in an abandoned shipyard, mail sorters, a bank. But there is nothing natural about the scenes: the taxi driver very engagingly proclaims the greatest wisdom about the systemic error we call liberal capitalism, the homeless take on the climate, the sorters our compulsion to buy, the bank turns out to be a circus and young people still turn out to be hopeful. All this up to and including the finale with Cate Blanchett in a supermarket.

All the texts are composed of works by those hundreds of poets and sages, so do not sound directly naturalistic coming from the characters who utter them. Yet the actors manage to deliver them so naturally, and Rosefeldt portrays it so intimately that you drink their words.

Incredible technology

The music plays a leading role in the interludes, but explodes in the finale. And then you realise how crazy it is that all this is synchronised: the choir, the drummers, the film. Incredible technique, not only in the presentation, but in the whole creative process, in which a New York Taxi turning somersaults is completely natural, and is also brought that way.

The setting in which Rosefeldt films all this is set in many different cities, but it feels like a big global New York: A city where the human scale is lost, transport motorised (from the air, I saw one skinny bike lane) and the architecture apocalyptic (that huge concrete hall: insane!).

Kyiv

The search for sets has been stressful for Rosefeldt. The event was originally due to premiere at the Holland Festival last year, but as Rosefeldt was working on final filming in Kyiv, the film's story caught up with him: Putin began his war against the decadent West and invaded Ukraine. Art went on the run. And found alternatives that fit seamlessly together, the world being a metropolis with no way out.

The most beautiful location is the one the project was also made for: the Central Market Hall on the soon-to-be-gentrified wholesale market area in Amsterdam West. The little train you are put on as a visitor to reach that hall could just be part of the film, and the hall certainly is.

End time

This film with its meaningful title contributes to the powerless end-time feeling that grips many people thanks to pandemics, climate disasters and war. Rosefeldt, with his dozens of philosophers and poets, offers no solution, because there is none, so much that every debate between the thinkers in that film makes clear.

Among all that horror, at least there is still hope in the people around you, the people who are beautiful and share beautiful thoughts. Or a smile. That's what art is capable of.

Whether there is any consolation left? I had the rare good fortune of being allowed to visit Laurie Anderson at Carré after the press preview, elsewhere already glowing review by colleague Helen Westerik. Laurie Anderson managed to make us all grimace at the mess we made of it. May she live another 100 years, it will all not have been in vain. Don't need any more experts either.