Julieta Jacobi

Julieta Jacobi conducts research at the intersection of science and art. She completed a Master’s degree in Psychomotricity, specialising in body psychotherapy, at Philipps University of Marburg (UMR), as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre Education, specialising in dance, at the University of the Arts in Social Contexts Ottersberg (HKS Ottersberg). In addition to her position at the Research College, she works at Wissenschaft & Kunst within the focus area ‘Society and Sustainability | Contemporary Art and Cultural Productions’. There, she is involved in teaching and the CoCreART research project and is active in the ‘Community Outreach’ programme.

Previously, she worked in the ‘Psychology of Movement’ department (UMR), as a research assistant for inclusion and the arts (HKS Ottersberg), and as a student assistant in education for the blind and visually impaired (UMR). She has also taught in the field of cultural education at the UMR, the HfMDK Frankfurt am Main and the HKS Ottersberg.

Julieta Jacobi’s research interests lie at the intersection of disability and gender studies, with a focus on ocularcentrism (and critiques) and sensory appropriations of urban space. Performance studies, artistic research, relational theories of space, soma and sensory studies, and feminist embodiment research are particularly central to her doctoral project within the inter-university doctoral school ‘Cultures in Transformation’.

Dissertation project: Multisensory appropriation of urban space. Performance-theoretical approaches to a critique of ocularcentrism

First supervisor: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Lucia D’Errico (Gustav Mahler University)
Second supervisor: Assoz. Prof. Dr. Elke Zobl (University of Salzburg, Inter-University Organization Arts & Knowledges)

‘I’m in a hurry and it’s dark, so it’s good that Google Maps shows me the shortest route: five hundred metres straight ahead, then turn right.’ The Western centralisation of vision discussed here is called ocularcentrism. It forms the framework within which attention is visually orientated in communication and orientation practices. Ocularcentrism can also be found in language and writing, as it is the main reference system for the so-called objectivity of space in Western epistemology. It is from this norm that corresponding or deviating subject positions such as the sighted and the blind are produced in the first place.

As an aspect of this visual naturalisation, it is a matter of course for sighted people like me to be addressed by the codes and instructions, such as the directions explained at the beginning. The fact that my eyes guide my physical actions, such as measuring the distance, taking quick, careless steps or turning my head to orientate myself, is normal for me. So, it is also my blind spot that the point of view from which and for which the Google Maps map was drawn is a sighted person.

The perspective of this work is characterised by the fact that it questions this perspective and also seeks to trace a multiplicity of senses. A central theme of the work is the exclusion of other senses as a possible interface between patriarchy and the modern, autonomously capable subject. How could this interface be genealogically founded? How can it be experienced in urban orientations? Which ‘other sensual’ perceptions remain marginalised? Which ways of sensing the body are (not) produced? And (how) for whom can what counts and what does not count be expanded and a ‘new way of feeling’ (Rancière) be explored? Drawing on the expert knowledge of sighted participants and those identified as blind or visually impaired from the Salzburg Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, I am exploring these questions. We have collaborated to develop a walk as a performative micro-urban laboratory, in which blind and visually impaired guides lead the way through the city. In doing so, we examine what it means to find one’s way around the city without sight, while the sighted walk participants wear dark glasses. The project falls within the fields of artistic research, performance studies, disability and gender studies, and sensory studies.

More information on the walks:
See with all senses – walk in October 2025
See with all senses – walk in June 2026