Sam Janssen is a multi-disciplinary artist who graduated from WDKA in 2022. Janssen’s works are the result of research into the digital realm – a space that functions as our main reality and insists on our participation. Janssen manipulates monitors and screens into sculptures and performances that
seem to bring them to life as they react to their surroundings.
In some of the works, like Screenfreeze no.2 and Spectrum, the screens are frozen in time but seem to be living because of the color changes and the abstract images that embody living organisms. Janssen has taken the contrast between the digital and living world even further by creating works that react to their surroundings. Sensitive surveillance occurs 1/2 and 2/2 change color when they recognize how many people are standing in front of it, as if the work is vulnerable to its surroundings.
Together with artist Lisette Ros, Sam Janssen has created an interactive analogue installation designed to generate a digital experience. This work is about the fragility of the body, the quality of being easily damaged and its sensory functioning. It questions and studies whether the ‘human body’ can
evolve into ‘übermensch’, collecting different experiences of fragile, sensory operations to find future forms of (post)humanism.
During the live performance, which will be performed during the opening on the 13th of January, Ros challenges the vulnerability and resistance of her body through a sensory detoxification ritual.
The artist will perform a live cupping session on her own skin and flesh while interacting with the light installation.
