Scene Shifters (book)
Saskia Janssen, Scene Shifters When Saskia Janssen turned 21 she joined the circus. Working as a snake charmer she travelled from town to town throughout Europe but after a while, not having tradiotional circus roots and feeling she was the only outsiderin a tight-knit family, she swapped the continual displacement of travelling life for art school.Studying first at the Koninklijke Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in the Hague and then at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, Janssen began making photographs : directing ‘real people’ – friends, aquaintances, strangers she met on the street- to perform in front of her lens in a variety of different locations. Sometimes low-key and intimate, sometimes spectacular and complex, Saskia Janssen’s work fascinates in its enigmatic combination of performance, sculpture and photo-shoot. Turning ordinary people into models and creating drama out of documentary, Janssen examines contemporary displacement on a macro and micro level. In the publication Super Stage, Janssen invites us to take a trip with her around the various locations she has used as stages, from a hotel room in Moscow, via a caravan in Belgium and into the hull of a containership on the Yellow River. And on the way we will be introduced to Janssen’s cast of ‘performers’ including sailors, nightclub bouncers, lawyers and cosmonauts……
texts : Hans Aarsman, Sophie Berrebi, Saskia Janssen, Owen Oppenheimer
design : Mevis & van Deursen, English 192 pages, pb 22,5 x 16,5 cm
ISBN 90-75380-83-6
price : € 23,- Euro
release date : September 4, 2004
Booklaunch at 18.00 at the Artimo Bookshop, Elandsgracht 8, with performance of Margarita from Uzbekistan
