In this one-on-one conversation, Maxim Februari reflects on the way the freedom of artists to set their own conditions for articulating their responses to the world as they experience it is being restricted. In his 2020 Huizinga lecture, Februari makes the case for ‘bad art’: uncensored, substandard work that breaches the boundaries of propriety, and that, rather serving as a mouthpiece for the powers that be, causes friction. ‘We need artists to shape the world,’ says Februari, ‘to solve the climate crisis and the resource distribution problem, and to devise future scenarios on identity and terrorism. Everyone apparently sees it as a given that the contributions made by art and literature will be beneficial; that they will steer humanity in the right direction. But which direction is the right one? How can we be sure? And anyway doesn’t art have better things to do?’