Janneke Janssen

During my time as a board member of Hedah foundation, centre for contemporary arts Maastrich, I worked on diverse projects; the programming of several exhibitions, work visits with artists, the self-initiated two-weekly film programme, collaborations with the Jan Van Eyck Academy (Matt Mullican), the Academy of Fine Arts Maastricht and other art schools (Colabs series). Hedah’s filmprogramme was a collaborative project of Hedah, B32 and the Jan van Eyck Academy. Amongst others I organised and curated film screenings every two weeks on Wednesdays or Thursdays. We screened films, video’s, shorts, Youtube compilations and documentaries that went beyond the mainstream commercial offers of the traditional movie theatres in Maastricht. Also, we programmed present audio-visual artworks/projects of young and emerging artists. Colabs was a collaborative exchange project between fine art students from Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands. Aïscha Berg (former board member of Hedah) and I made a plan for this one’s-a-year event (Hedah organised it for three years in a row, now Marres took it over). Three groups consisting of four participants from various academies worked at Hedah for a period of two weeks. Different artists and curators visited each group to give feedback and stimulate dialogue. This project has been developed out of the structural collaboration between Hedah and the Fine Art Academy Maastricht, department Fine Arts. According to the participants wish to not only exchange works and exhibit together, but to actually work with each other. Working at Hedah was considered more of an experimental situation instead of pushing an exhibition, even though a working period might eventually result in an exhibition. As a graphic designer I made hedah’s last visual identity, for some of the events the posters, flyers and the yearbooks. The logo of Hedah provides a clear and sober image, in which it consists of a block pattern. A Helvetica Bold character in each block is forming the logo. Through the use of color and the ability to move the blocks and place them in a corner shape, it makes the dynamic logo more playful. From the logo the corporate identity has been established, repetitions of the logo and the variability of this creates patterns which may vary by application. The invitations are made out of text bars. On the basis of the text (name / title / location), the size of the text bar is determined, the ratio (height) of the beams depends on the text, so that the text becomes an image. All this within the given square that has been filtrated from the logo. During the time the posters and flyers design evolved to a more photographic approach. It shows a detail or an item that is presented in the show, lecture, archive performance or screening. Furthermore, sometimes I was occupied with public relations and maintaining and building of Hedah’s website, Facebook, newsletters and correspondence.