Janneke Janssen

A I visited the Stedelijk Museum for the exhibition Best Verzorgde Boeken 2016 from the Netherlands and Flanders in Amsterdam, I stumbled upon a title of a book, Belgian Autumn. It is about the gang of Nijvel who shot several people back in the 80’s. This has been my source of inspiration regarding the making of an artist’s book. I based my artist’s book on a suggested reconstruction of an “unheimisch” event that we don’t know the resort of and photographed objects with my phone on the way from school to home and from homeschool. The pictures where taken in black and white images. This gives them a slightly lurid edge and also objectives the objects. Then I printed these photos and placed them on a memo card. There is a date, an item number and a short description at the card. Also, some written memos are attached to it. A certain order and story are suggested by the number of cards, but this is essentially not the case. Something leads to nothing and nothing leads to something. In order to show all of the cards as being research, I have not presented them, for example, on a bulletin board. I found this too obvious and from my own interest in making books I did not want to lose the opportunity to make a book of it. I’ve tried to find a way to construct and design a book form where you can see some of the cards together and be able to make connections. You can also browse through the ‘pages’ of the book one by one. Specifications: Format 62 cm x 15 cm 34 pages 98 Photographs and date stamps on A6 memo cards Inside 90 gr2 Offset Cover 450 gr2 cardboard Accordeon and wave book ////// B Notebook in different layers of different format booklets. Hand bounded ////// C In between assignments I often make zines or booklets. The connection between them all is a certain transmission in technics such as cutting an animation up in frames and print or risograph and bind them again in an existing book form. A second connection is the use of collections of objects, several topics like clouds, stones, pylons, melting icecreams and photographs of places which I traveled to or a registration of an exhibition that I took part of among others. ////// D Borders are the scars from the past and sometimes still very fresh. The border areas - along the side of the border - often are the ‘underdogs’ of a country. The attraction, which may include the economy and culture, are often in the center (for example look at Randstad in the Netherlands). Because of this it often occurs the loss of identity at the border regions. Collaborate with the Euroregion (focused on the Euroregion; Netherlands, Germany and Belgium) is a solution that could lead to getting the border regions out of their isolation, and new impulses may arise from cooperation. Allowing them to join and unite and so expand and create a kind of new areas. This increasingly expanding area (zooming out of it), from large to small ensures that it again creates an expansion of small to large. In the beginning, there is still a context. As the expansion progresses (and the area is becoming smaller) the context is further lost, after which it comes back with further expansion. Completely parallel to the idea of expansion and the emergence of new areas are the pages of my magazine. The left pages are created by copying enlargements of a white sheet under a copier. This process is becoming more abstract. Firstly, the copy becomes totally black from the zoom, then more and more white appears. The right pages are always enlargements of the previous articles. If the article with which I start is ’landmarks’ (Where there is another context within the Euroregion theme) it may be that a later article is about a really small topic without any context. When there is no context to be found, the story and images are going from small to large (zooming), back to a context. I added a page between every left and right page for the supporting images. In these images there will be more and more visible from the environment, further on this environment disappears again. Parallel to the copies and texts the context is clear, then the context will disappear. Specifications: Format 22 cm x 14 cm 40 pages Inkjet print Full-colour print Inside 80 gr2 postoffice blue Cover 600 gr2 cardboard Hand bounded ////// E Originally a workshop for young modern dancers and choreographers to develop ideas as artists in residence, Löss focuses after 2002 on urban arts, especially urban dance (hip-hop, breakdance, street dance) and rap. Stressing the global nature of urban juvenile culture, Löss investigated its reception by cultural institutions, art schools and the responsible authorities and politicians in the Netherlands, adjacent European countries and in Morocco and Turkey (homelands of most of the immigrants who dominate the urban scene), with the objective of arriving at an understanding of the artistic potential of international juvenile culture and means of promoting it. The research was carried out in a continuous dialogue with practice in the form of projects with young urban artists. Between 2002 and 2014 Löss has realized a number of projects with breakdancers, street dancers and rappers throughout the Dutch Limburg, with the aim of enhancing their skills and broadening their horizon by working together in staging shows and introducing them to elements of modern stage dance. After 12 years Löss, dance theatre, a documentation in print and DVD was a result. Simultaneously, research was being done on the opportunities offered to young urban dancers to develop their skills in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, England, Germany, Spain, Morocco and Turkey. Together with the initiators Jannie Donker en Jan Verschure we made a plan for the collection and choice of information; texts, interviews, photographs and videos. From there we extracted the core and made it ready to work within the book and DVD Generation (-) Mix. Specifications: Format Square L 21 cm x 21 cm 60 pages Offset print Inside Black & white print 100 gr2 biotop Cover 450 gr2 biotop Perfect bound ////// F We see the Metro cover of December 8, 2016, the day the December feasts have begun at the supermarket Spar. The cover consists of different sign systems that collide and interfere; texts, graphics and photography. There is not so much news to be seen. My viewing direction goes automatically to certain areas on this cover. I have indicated these areas globally with a round red sticker after I have changed the cover of the Metro from colour to black and white with a copier. I made use of this transformation because I expected it to temper my attention of looking directly at the colour subjects. I wanted to keep this parameter or signifier as neutral as possible. The red stickers are also more noticeable now. A picture is never neutral, it is always seen as a certain staging of reality and therefore extremely loaded. Most attention is still given to the big picture, an advertisement and the big short headings (where each Metro is full of, especially the cover). The big cover photo attracts the most attention. What do we see in it? The denotation of the iconic image includes three male professional soccer players (two of whom belong to the same team and one to the other team) in action on a football field surrounded by the audience sitting on stands. There is a ball in sight and a goal in the background. The connotations that evoke the image are a sport, competition, fighting, the match itself and strength. The convention of sports photography is that it shows an action, is ‘objective’, straightforward and quickly made at the right moment, showing a (part of) the match, the euphoric victory or the dramatic loss afterward. The headline underneath the photographic image reads: “Club drips down with zero points.” The function of linguistic syntaxes of the headlines is to get more attention from the reader for that particular part of the newspaper. Because of the connotations of the linguistic signs, you get a representation of the social codes and can understand their meanings. A metaphor is used in this headline: “drip” that says “leave” or “no longer participate in the contest”, “lose”, but with the tail between the legs, says this popular newspaper. At first glance, one could interpret that if the shirts of two soccer players have the same layout, they belong together in one team. Then the other soccer player with a different shirt layout will want to stop the ball. The sentence underneath the picture also makes it clear that there is no doubting possible for the reader. The photo is used as proof. The picture has been brought as ‘natural’ but it has been framed and a selection has been made to bring the news. It shows, for example, well-known people of a professional club and not the village club’s B team. The text accompanies the image and is naturalized. Also, the text gives connotations of the linguistic signs that impose limits on the meaning of the image. The mythical significance is constructed and is a cultural meaning. The text continues: “Claudemir looks with dismay how his former teammates make the ball elusive.” It’s dramatic. The ball is being held by the opponents who used to be his own teammates. The picture and the short message can be seen as a blurb for the more comprehensive whole, shown on page 22 of this edition of the Metro. Large pictures of sports are a frequent discourse in the Metro. The starting point The composition of the picture is such that it takes you into the suggestion of (viewing) movement aimed at the ball, and the defense of the object before the goal which is also in front of the players. The player who has the visual interaction with the ball attracts my attention the most. And, therefore, I’m taken along by the viewing point of this player in a zoom, in and out, to his head and eyes looking at the ball. As it were, I also become part of the game (of codes called soccer) and see the ball that must be held in this particular moment. I have edited and reconstructed this ideological structure. Colouring is added again by copying the black and white cover with round red stickers with a single colour copier. As a result, there arises a new signifier. The photo has a composition that sucks you into the picture. The image of the head of the soccer player is shown to be no more image by the zooming of it, but a far-reaching abstraction of the head. It is no longer recognizable as such and has no expression or viewing point anymore. It has lost its context. This effect, a trick effect, I tried to capture and magnify and reduce by means of an image sequence. I’ve bundled the whole into a flipbook to make the viewing movement more insightful. In this way, the size of the original Metro shrunk so that the booklet can also be easily used as a flipbook. You can see a video of these images on the link http://apple.pxl.be/3techniek/11600493/metrokijkbeweging.mov Specifications: A7 format 164 pages Laser print Full-colour print Inside and cover 90 gr2 Cycles offset Perfect bound ////// G Compilation of watercoloured animals that mainly live in the forest, printed on cards that help the dementing and people of Dienstencentrum Ter Engelen (Het Roer), for childcare and counseling of children and adults with mental disabilities, to better understand their living environment. In coöperation with Steffie Mathijs.