Amarte Fonds

Meet the Method

Hajar Fargan

Hajar Fargan received a contribution for her performance Meet the Method. The promise of a "better you" adorns the cover of many a self-help book; the courses and step-by-step plans have become part and parcel of modern society. This promise of social engineering reigns supreme in our society: from body to mentality, from gender to identity, from botox to namaste at the end of your yin-yoga class in Bos en Lommer. Everything seems possible. Time to question this promise. In Meet the Method, a tedtalk meets self-help course on speed, an omniscient figure seduces visitors into a thought experiment about identity. A controlled account of falling between worlds and ending up in an alienating in-between, where victim and perpetrator merge and watching coincides with being watched.

Hajar is an actor, playwright, writer and anthropologist. Born in Etarcha, Morocco and living in Amsterdam since 2000. During her bachelor's degree in Cultural Anthropology, she oriented herself broadly in the cultural field; she did internships at hip-hop label Top Notch and public venues De Nieuwe Liefde and de Rode Hoed, among others. After this, she was admitted to the Amsterdam Drama and Contemporary Music Academy, where she studies to this day. Her work centers around the leading anthropological proverb: "to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange." She questions seemingly "natural" norms and hopes to present alternative realities.