Werner Herzog
Bluhm-Kaul Keynote

The work of filmmaker, writer, and artist Werner Herzog is marked by a relentless pursuit of the extraordinary—across remote landscapes, extreme human conditions, and the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction. Drawing from the philosophical ideas underpinning his forthcoming book The Future of Truth, Herzog’s keynote examines how his idea of “ecstatic truth”—a poetic form of insight that transcends factual accuracy—can endure in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, deepfakes, and digital illusion. Reflecting on over six decades of experience directing in some of the world’s most challenging environments, Herzog will consider how film can serve as a vessel for awe, endurance, metaphysical inquiry, and empathy in a world increasingly shaped by uncertainty.

Werner Herzog will be introduced by Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of London’s Serpentine, whose multi-decade project of recording interviews with the world’s most significant artists, architects, philosophers, and novelists is the source of inspiration for this lecture series.

German filmmaker Werner Herzog grew up as a child in a remote valley in the Bavarian mountains. Until age eleven, he did not know of the existence of cinema. He started to develop film projects from age fifteen and worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory during the last years of high school to finance them. He also started to travel on foot. He made his first phone call at age seventeen and his first film at nineteen. He dropped out of college, where he was studying history and literature. He has since written, produced, and directed around seventy films, including Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982), Grizzly Man (2005), and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010). He has published poetry and books of prose such as Of Walking in Ice (1972), Conquest of the Useless (2004), and more recently the novel The Twilight World (2021).  He staged about a dozen operas at opera houses around the world including Milan’s La Scala, and has acted in films and television series such as Jack Reacher (2012) and The Mandalorian (2019). Herzog’s installation Hearsay of the Soul (2012) was exhibited at the 2012 Whitney Biennial and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. He founded Rogue Film School as a counterpoint to what is taught in most film schools around the world.

Hans Ulrich Obrist is artistic director of Serpentine in London, and senior advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions. Obrist received the CCS Bard Award for Curatorial Excellence in 2011, the International Folkwang Prize in 2015, and the Prix François Morellet in 2025.

The Bluhm-Kaul Keynotes are made possible through a major gift from Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul.