Julieta Jacobi

Julieta Jacobi completed a master’s degree in motology with a focus on body psychotherapy at the Philipps University of Marburg and a bachelor’s degree in theater pedagogy with a focus on dance at the Hochschule für Künste im Sozialen.

She worked  as a research assistant in the “Psychology of Movement” department at the Philipps University of Marburg (UMR), as a research assistant for inclusion and art (HKS Ottersberg) and as a student assistant in education for the blind and visually impaired (UMR).  Among other things, she was involved in the organization of the conference “Demokratisierung der Sinne. Sensuality of Democracy” (UMR). She also teaches at the UMR, the HfMDK Frankfurt am Main and the HKS Ottersberg in the field of Cultural Education.

Julieta Jacobi’s research interests lie at the nexus of disability and gender studies with a focus on ocularcentrism (critiques) and sensory appropriations of urban space. Performance studies, artistic research, relational spatial theories, soma and sense studies and feminist embodiment research are particularly central to her dissertation project in 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 (MOZ)
Second supervisor: Assoz. Prof. Dr. Elke Zobl (PLUS)

‘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?
I would like to explore these questions through the expert knowledge of visually sighted actors who are labelled as blind and visually impaired. Together, a performative micro-city laboratory will be developed as a method for exploring different sensory appropriation of urban space. As this field of research touches on the boundaries of the linguistically tangible, artistic-performative work will be carried out in addition to collaborative-auto-ethnographic research.
The project can be categorised in performance studies, disability and gender studies, soma and sense studies as well as motology with cross-references to cultural studies research.