Image Credits: Bram van der Giessen // Lisa van Zelm
It’s hard to sustain yourself as an artist these days. Sure, there’s commissions, funding comps, and grants, but who really has time to do all that stuff, right? Not only is it time-consuming and difficult, but it’s also boring. All artists really want to do is create work and have fun doing it – and get paid a little on the side. Universities like to teach you about the different resources available to you, but ultimately, it all comes down to the work. And in order to produce work that will get noticed, you first need to understand the depth of your idea. You need to be able to dive into the concepts of your work. Wade in them. Embrace them and be willing to change with them. Then, it helps to place yourself in an environment with an audience willing to receive them. This is what Roos Janssen did.
Roos’ art combines reflective materials and projections of water. Her works are subtle and seem simple on the surface. But dig a little deeper, and the infinite, immersive qualities of her installations become apparent, which is fitting given the nature of her source material – immersive deriving from the Latin words im (into) and mergere (plunge).
Fusing her loves of reflection and abstraction, Roos projects bodies of water onto a wide range of surfaces, resulting in abstract lines and patterns that constantly flow in and out of each other, fusing, separating, and forming something new. You can spend hours entranced at the different patterns that emerge or get lost in the vastness of it all. Who would have thought that simple projections of water and colour could be so enticing? Its minimalistic design is a testament to an artist who is diving to the core of her work.
By now, you can probably guess that nature is another of Roos’ great loves. In Buddhism, water (often depicted as a flowing river) represents the concept of annica, which translates to impermanence. Annica is a fundamental truth that all things are constantly changing and are never fixed in place. In art, this idea of constant movement and change is something that is practised across various disciplines. In music, change keeps the composition interesting. In writing, not being able to deduce what will happen next compels the reader to investigate further. In all instances, the impermanence of a situation keeps you on the edge of your seat. It’s what makes art interesting.
This idea of impermanence is something creatives strive for, and like the devoted practitioners of Buddhism, Roos Janssen has, in some ways, adopted this philosophy into her life. Not only has she drifted from photography and graffiti to projection mapping, but she has also developed kinetic sculptures and has taken her work from gallery spaces to nightclubs around her hometown of Rotterdam.
The final love of hers, and possibly the most important to her career, is sound. Her first connections in the city flowered from personal connections which ultimately led to a collaboration with Future Intel. From there, she has found both community and passion in fusing electronic music within her work. Music that pushed her into meditative states and allowed her to explore the deeper layers of what her work really is.
In 2023, she collaborated with Dutch artist Bas Dobbelaer and videographer Joep van Weelden on an audiovisual counterpart to his Binding Elements EP. In the same year, she created an installation for Marjin S’ Under The Lily Pads music video (with camera work from Cedric Veldhuis) which was released on Irish virtuoso Spray’s Spray Forever imprint.
Alongside this, Roos has become a familiar presence in Rotterdam’s grassroots scene. Her work has been present at events and venues such as Club Bizarre, WirWar Rotterdam, Rhythmic Culture, Pelagic Ambient, Into the Universes, FOMO, and the multidisciplinary hub Time Is The New Space. She has also worked with Amsterdam’s Radio Radio and was part of DGTL x ABN Amro New Horizons program, where she linked up with renowned visual artist Heleen Blanken.
In our interview, we trace Roos’ story. From her university experiments with photography to embedding herself in the Rotterdam scene, and her collaboration with DGTL.
You started out as a photography student, right?
That’s right! I started, I think, in my last year of high school. My dad was a hobbyist photographer, and I got really into it. I started this course at the Kooning Academy on Saturdays. It was kind of like a pre-course to help you build a portfolio. Each week, we had to make like 25 differentiations of what you had made before, so it kept you trying all different kinds of things.
Back then, I was really into street art and wanted to do graffiti, but I was a bit too scared to do it, so I tried to find different ways to work with that like projecting on old buildings to create a sort of temporary graffiti. I also did a lot of photography and drawing on pictures. It was all based around image. Then, when I started studying in the years after, I kind of realised that I wasn’t really interested in making technically good images. I found that I was way more interested in distorting images and working with long shutter speeds so that everything would become sort of vague and wavy. I liked how all the lines would kind of dissolve into each other.
How did you discover these techniques? Were there any artists you were drawing from at that time, or was it more self-experimentation?
I had a couple of people that I was interested in, but I think a lot of it was trial and error. I realised that I liked the non-technical stuff better.
Looking back, in the first years of the Academy, I was really into collaging and stuff, and distorting things with my hands. Then, in my third year, I spent half a year in Norway, and that’s where I really delved into reflections as well as architecture. I learned how things were built up from certain textures and lines, and how it was all based around different shapes.
The reflections became a sort of gateway towards this really meditative state because of the repetition involved, but it also has lots of familiarity with your surroundings. I guess it was a sense of peace for me to kind of jump in and do it.
How did you end up in Norway?
I went as part of an exchange programme. I ended up in Bergen KMD, which stands for art, music and design. I studied Fine Arts over there, and it was a really free program. All you had was your studio space, and you could speak with different teachers if you wanted, but you could also choose to do things on your own.
Did you prefer this way of teaching?
It was super different from the Academy back home because here, you have feedback lessons every week, whereas there, you had a lot of time to think for yourself and really dive into your thought process without being steered in any direction, you know. That really worked for me.
That was what I enjoyed the most about Norway. There was a lot more time to discover yourself and the work, and to talk about it with other people.
When I got back, I had a teacher who was really nice, and I printed out all the work I had made in Norway and laid it out on the floor. She looked through it and told me what she saw in the work, and then traced the guideline through it. That was a really eye-opening experience for me. It showed me what my work could be, and how broad you could work within the photography department.
Photography is a reflection of light on the surface. Once I understood this, I started experimenting with reflections and with different materials for projections, reflective materials, and so on.
When did you start creating more mixed-media and material-based work?
I graduated in the middle of COVID, so that wasn’t great, and it took me a while to be okay with that. A year later, I was asked to be a part of an exhibition called The New Current in Rotterdam. That was my first time showing my graduation work in an exhibition setting. I chose the song Routine by Skee Mask to coincide with the work, I feel like it really helped.
For me, the music connected what was happening in the installation. I couldn’t buy the rights to song at the time, so I put it in GarageBand and added maybe a hundred or something layers underneath so that they could use it somehow.
My roommate and best friend was a DJ, and we would experiment together. He would play Detroit Electro while I was in the background, experimenting with the installation. I can’t explain why, but somehow everything seemed to be – coincidental. Perfect. The movements of the images alongside the music really drew me in. That’s when the nightlife came into it.
We started off doing small installations at parties. I really love the coincidental moments; that’s why I never did any live sets. I always pre-made videos because it worked, and I really enjoyed having one image that could be distorted in all these different ways.
What parties were you working with at that time?
It was mostly small parties hosted by friends. Some of them are opening a new club in Rotterdam called Export, so that’s pretty exciting!
Is that the underground one?
Yeah, it’s gorgeous. Those guys have really supported me in trying out new things in the nightlife scene. I started with them because they really liked my installation from my first exhibition. They encouraged me to install it at one of their parties, and it worked, kind of. But afterwards, it developed into something better.
The Bas Dobbelaer collab happened when I was asked to be a part of the Into The Universes. It was programmed by Vincent Rang. The format involved a visual artist being paired up with a producer and was paired with Bas. I think the first time we met was on the night of the event.
How did you feel about that? Did it make you feel nervous or a bit excited?
A little bit of both, I think. We talked briefly, but the funny thing was that he hadn’t seen the visuals before.
You were both going in blind then?
I had heard his album, and that really helped me get into this state because his music really pulls you in. After that, I think I messaged him asking to work together. That was when he came back to me about this album.
It was funny because he had liner notes that came with the album, which mentioned something about a ray of light hitting the water, which I thought was cool because I didn’t know that we were taking from the same inspirations.
I feel like the universe has a way of just bringing the right people together, doesn’t it?
Yeah, for real. That project was really challenging. We recontextualised the album into a sort of grid format taking away from the album cover, which we recreated using these PVC plates. The PVC plates are see through so the projection almost turns into this holograph, untouchable thing which works really well with the projections of water. It was also the first time I had worked with a MIDI controller. I used it to make all of these grid elements appear and disappear at some point. It was a cool experience to try for the first time.
How did you feel about using this type of workflow? Using different devices and whatnot.
It was fun to try it out, but I like the idea that things can sort of happen together, so I decided against doing more of that. However, I would love to work with Bas again. His music and inspirations really fit with my work. The workflow of collaborating with another artist is something I do really enjoy. It’s amazing to be able to take inspiration from another artist – and vice versa – and create an experience together.
It’s not just musicians you’ve worked with. You also worked with Heleen Blanken recently for DGTL.
Yeah, I got asked last November by Tessa Ponjee from DGTL. She called me one day, and it was a strange call to get because I didn’t know anything about it. She called me and asked if I wanted to participate in the DGTL and ABN Amro. The aim was to kick-start the career of a young female artist, and the mentorship would be from Heleen Blanken. That was an amazing experience.
We started working pretty quickly after that because we had a short deadline. The idea had to go to the municipality for the permits and stuff, so we had one and a half months or something to get the concept all done.
It was a like a speed run then.
Yeah. And it’s super strange when you have made smaller installations and haven’t had experience with big material budgets; you normally have and be creative budget-wise as well. For me, it was like, ‘Wow!’ There’s this sea of possibilities. You could make whatever you want. Of course, there is a budget you need to stay within, but it was way bigger than usual.
How did you decide? Was it pre-planned, or did you and Helene work together to design it?
We worked together to design it. At first, I went through my old work to see if there was anything I wanted to blow up, as it was in the NDSM Amsterdam, which is a huge warehouse-like space with really high ceilings, so you could hang objects in there. But then I also thought about things that I’ve always wanted to try but were never possible.
I spoke with Helene a lot, and she also introduced me to working with kinetic sculptures and things with moving parts. I had never done that before, so I wasn’t sure how to approach it, but I’m really happy that we tried it. I think it worked well. The movement of the sculpture made the materials shine even more, since the light could hit it from all different kind of ways. I also wanted to incorporate things I had done before, but in a more elevated form. That’s when we came up with this tunnel-ish structure.
The space that it was going to be in was lower than the rest of the warehouse, and it felt to me like I needed something really long, so we broke it up into five segments. The installation was about materials that slowly dissolve into a beam of light so each segment had a different material or texture that would bounce the light in some way. We had one segment with this reflective aluminium that I bashed with a hammer to give it a more organic shape, and we also had another segment with water in it, which was crazy. I’ve never worked with real water before, only projections, so it was awesome to try that.
Did you have any realisations working with real water compared to the projections?
Because it was all trial and error, it gave me the same explorative feeling that I also get when I go on a walk and search for interesting textures. I’m happy that I was able to bring that into this installation so that others can notice it too.
I feel that due to the physical nature of water, every time the light hits it, it can lead to a new experience.
Yeah, definitely. The idea behind the work was to create this dissolving effect with the materials. You start with a harder material that turns into liquid. We had this 3D-printed cylinder that kind of mimics a ripple. Then we had these plexiglass circles, which were positioned behind each other with a laser on them. Fragmented as the light passed through, the ripples would come apart ad it would end as a beam of light. The idea was about the tangible vs. the unchangeable and how it all kind of ends as this light. It’s like when you look at the water and see sparkles of sunlight on top of it.
Are there any other artists who are inspiring your work that you draw from?
Oh yeah, I love the work of Olafur Eliasson. I think there’s a documentary series on Netflix or something, and there’s this short introduction about his first work around Rainbows. He mentions that the viewer kind of makes the artwork because it’s about how the light bounces into your eyes and makes the rainbow visible. It’s all of these small moments that maybe not everyone notices, that are amazing to me.
What do you like to do when you’re not creating?
I work as an exhibition producer for Brutus. It’s an art space in Rotterdam, so I help a lot of other artists get their work presented. It’s something I really enjoy, and I also spend a lot of time in nature walking around the water and taking videos.
Do you go on hikes and stuff?
I’m trying to do more of that. I’m planning a trip to Slovenia next week, which I’m really excited about. I also like to go bouldering and listening to music.
What’s next for Roos Janssen?
That’s a really good question. After the work at DGTL, I’m kind of figuring out the next steps. DGTL were really kind and let me keep the sculpture, but now the challenge is figuring out how to work with it. It’s super nice, but it’s also expensive to hang somewhere, so I’m trying to figure out a way to make it more accessible.
Also, because it’s also made of all these segments, I think it will be interesting to play with that. I would like to work with other artists as well as Bas again, as I really enjoyed working with him and his music.