In 1994, an old Dutch lugger lies off the coast of St. Petersburg. “The Ship of Fools,” it reads in large letters. The ship is painted blue, and a tall tree stands on the deck. The Russians are stunned by the ship’s activities. Could it be spies? The captain reassures them. “Your Minister of Culture has promised to help us with our noble mission: exchanging international culture.” Enormous prosthetic pointy ears protrude from beneath his captain’s cap.

At that time, Captain August Dirks had just embarked on his first major voyage aboard the Azart, the ship of fools with which Dirks and his crew, as a traveling theater company, intend to sail around the world along the VOC route, “not to steal and kill, but to play and share.” For nearly thirty years, this is what the Azart has been doing, with Azartplein (named after the ship) on KNSM Island in Amsterdam as its permanent base. They pick up new crew on the spot. Some stay only a few days, others for years. On all the major voyages, there was always someone with a camera on board. This footage was gratefully used for the cheerful and inspiring documentary Azart – Come Make Art by Annike Kaljouw, who followed the ship with her camera since 2017, and Masha Novikova, who lived on it in the 1980s.

Dirks drew the idea of ​​setting up a ship of fools from a painting by the late medieval painter Hieronymus Bosch, which depicts babbling monks and nuns being carried off to hell on a ship. It’s a common motif in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The idea is that those who are seduced by foolishness can kiss eternal life in paradise goodbye. But like Erasmus in Praise of Folly, Dirks embraces foolishness. Wisdom leads to inertia; a life where you risk everything requires foolishness. That doesn’t mean a ship full of fools can sail around the world without any problems. The Azart has been chained up for years on several occasions. Like in 2002, when the ship accidentally ran over an electricity cable. Thousands of cows in the polder around Alkmaar could no longer be milked. Energy company Nuon took Dirks to court, and it took three years before the Azart was allowed to sail again.

The close connection between art and life for Dirks became clear when he visited the doctor in 2021, fully decked out in his jester’s costume. With pointy ears, crooked clown shoes, and jingling bells on his wrists, he learned that he was terminally ill and likely had only a few months to live. Dirks: “For us, theater is more than just an hour-long show. We create theater every minute of the day, even when we’re doing the shopping.”

The doctor was proven wrong: the captain was now 73 and very much alive. Every now and then he travels to Ecuador, where his ship of fools has now run aground and serves as a cultural center for the local population.