Interview met Ann Veronica Janssens

Yann Chateigné – You are currently working on the final adjustments for 50 km of atmosphere to give a deep blue. I have the impression that the idea of doing something performative for Kunstenfestivaldesarts has been in the air for years.

Ann Veronica Janssens – Indeed, Kunstenfestivaldesarts had already asked me years ago to think about a proposal, but I didn’t really know how to respond. It was as if I was afraid of the idea of creating a show. I also needed time. I had to feel ready. When Daniel Blanga Gubbay and Dries Douibi [current artistic co-directors of the festival, NDA] came to see me, we talked about how movement is part of my work, and I was convinced. Whatever the invitation, it’s essential for me to feel a connection with the specificity of my practice. What was special was that Daniel and Dries wanted my project to engage with the scenic space from the outset, with tiered seating and a stage.

But you’ve already worked in theatre, notably with Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Pierre Droulers.

Yes, but I had a problem with the distance, because we couldn’t carry out my experiments. They became things to look at, rather than things to experiment with. For the Tours festival in 2000, we tried something very important. It was a two-part project called MA and MA-I. It was in this context that I created my first coloured artificial fog, with set designer Jim Clayburgh. People entered through the wings and found themselves on stage. There was no visibility. You could feel the deceleration, the movement in an infinite space and the colours of a sunset turned vertically. Working on a frontally-viewed piece for Kunstenfestivaldesarts is a major challenge. At one point, I thought about presenting works that the audience could experience on stage. I abandoned this idea and ended up proposing a project that uses only sound and voice as mediums.

What kind of experience does the piece offer?

It consists of a reading of my installation manuals. Since the beginning, my work has involved the implementation of specific technical protocols. So, in parallel, I produced these manuals, which now constitute a kind of large catalogue. Their reading on stage is occasionally interrupted by comments that are spoken ‘beneath’ the works being described, like an undertone. These were written by various people, including critics and art historians. There’s also a text by Philippe Bertels that is woven into the sequence of readings. It’s a work of fiction, written in a style very similar to my own. I like the fact that there is a sense of doubt, that we don’t know exactly what we are hearing, and then we move towards something dreamlike, almost fantastical. I wanted to give another materiality to this text; it had been written for the catalogue of my exhibition Grand bal, which took place at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan in 2023. You can hear the elements that preoccupy me: time, light. I wanted to make them explode through the voice, into space. So you imagine the works without seeing them. The festival brings together very different audiences, and I really like the idea that every evening, in the dark, all these people imagine the works and project themselves into so many different and unique realities.

So there are no images, no objects. Just text, bodies, sound. It’s curious that the situation you propose is somewhere between a work session and an almost intimate moment of revelation, between something very technical and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, a kind of invitation to dream…

There’s nothing to see. The dramaturgy is based on the voices. I read the scripts and Léone [François Janssens, Editor’s note] reads Philippe’s comments and text. Léone happens to be pregnant. Another production is underway while this play is being staged. It’s also a story for oral transmission. Léone is my daughter, and also a work colleague with whom I always discuss my ideas. She’s an actress. She has stage experience. I have never been comfortable talking about my work in public. I never imagined that I would one day be on stage. But at the same time, I know my work so well that it seemed right for me to read the text. There was also the question of language: we opted for subtitles and projections to accompany the voices. It’s material that is, in itself, a source of light, and that becomes important to the simplicity of the presentation. The context is also important. I chose the Chapelle des Brigittines as the venue, which is a very interesting place with multiple resonances.

The piece is also an artwork in its own right, echoing the poetic, atmospheric component of the works of historical conceptual artists such as Lawrence Weiner, Robert Barry, and Susan Hiller. In their practices, as in yours, the work comes into being, takes shape in the mind of the subject.

Yes, especially since my work is based on intangible things, on attempts to capture the uncapturable. My manuals can be considered poems, it’s true, but they have a very objective side. There is no contextual element. The ‘I’ doesn’t appear anywhere. There are descriptions of the works, the materials, the handling. They are technical manuals. It’s very methodical. I realised that often the people who show my work don’t read the manuals, so I’ve made them more sophisticated: now there are alerts, things in red. With each installation I improve, and the works and manuals also evolve. I added some observations. But it was too much detail for the stage, you could get lost. So I simplified it.

The title you have chosen is very evocative. It almost functions as an instruction: look up and imagine the distance that separates us from outer space.

‘50 km of atmosphere to create a deep blue’ is a phrase I borrowed from Alexandre Wajnberg. Alexandre is a science journalist, author and musician. His book 8 minutes 19 seconds, a long poem about the cosmos, which he published in 2002, has just been reissued. Eight minutes nineteen seconds is the time it takes for light to travel from the surface of the sun to our eyes on Earth. It was also the title of a project I had done. As he’d used it for his book, I asked him if he would agree to let me include a portion of his text. For me, 50 kilometres of atmosphere to create a deep blue is a way of describing reality. I would like to make people aware of how close that is—50 kilometres is the distance between Brussels and Ghent. It allows us to conceive and objectify something that we too often overlook. Something that is imperceptible: 50 km of atmosphere to create a deep blue.

• Interview conducted by Yann Chateigné in April 2025.
• Translated by Jodie Hruby.
• Yann Chateigné is curator and writer.