About me
Hi, I'm Ciska, I explore the intersectionality of systems, through an immersive process, resulting in performances, publications and interactive installations.
RESEARCHER, TRANSFORMATION DESIGNER, CHANGE MAKER, CURIOUS, LIST MAKER, PLANNER, REALISTIC OPTIMIST, OPEN PERSON, RESOURCEFUL, DRIVEN, STRATEGIC, DETERMINED & ENTHOUSIASTIC
Skills
Research, planning, sound design, collecting, directing, graphic design, Adobe (indesign, photoshop, audition),
Characteristics
Detail-oriented, curious, driven, resourceful, enthusiastic, open, realistic optimist
Artists Statement-> need to rewrite
HI, I am Ciska, a teamleader, researcher, creative, writer & future director, based in Rotterdam and I design for sustainable radical change.
My work explores the interconnections of systems, through interventions, immersive installations & performances. I create space for solidarity and empathy, with a focus on non-dominant narratives & (dis)connection with the world around. At the heart of my work is a belief in meaningful interactions and connections, and the strong combination of curiosity with empathy.
My research & work stems from an insatiable curiosity in the world. I explore this through many forms of (deep) research & by working together, this enriches a project by sharing insights, opinions & practices. In the collaboration, I like to see the bigger vision, making sure each little detail is thought of and making the vision tangible.
about
(Out-dated) systems inequality exploitation of all beings planetary destruction, othering
in
sustainable radical change driven by solidarity
to
investigate systems and all that connects them
EDUCATION
Transformation Design
Willem de Kooning Academy
2024-
Cum laude havo diploma
Bonaventura lyceum leiden
2024
Internship + scholarship
Junior Fellowship
RIJKSMUSEUM
2024
Transformation Design
Willem de Kooning Academy
2024-
Cum laude havo diploma
Bonaventura lyceum leiden
2024
Internship + scholarship
Junior Fellowship
RIJKSMUSEUM
2024
Trash Diary
(hidden) behaviours around trash
What even is trash?
What is language used around waste/trash?
What happens to medicinal waste?
WHAT ARE MY HIDDEN BEHAVIOURS AROUND TRASH?
all use a lot of drinking water.//
THE ROOM
THE Room is a liminal performance & installation, exploring empathy & strangerness, through a bureaucratic consent form, a waiver.
WE SEE THE ROOM, BUT HOW DOES THE ROOM PERCEIVE US?
//Pictures by Joana
Névoa//
You’ve been chosen to witness something very few ever do.
An opportunity to be perceived. If you wish to proceed, please follow me.//
THE Room is a liminal performance and installation. Visitors are invited by the hosts of a strange organisation, the Anomaly Initiative, who tell them they’ve been chosen for a rare opportunity: to be perceived by THE Room. Before entering, they must sign a waiver. They are warned that THE Room meets people only on rare occasions, that it is not used to humans, and that their presence is a privilege, one that comes with the responsibility to respect THE Room’s boundaries. They may leave at any point, up until the moment they are perceived.
Once inside, a visitor steps into a dark, empty space, where they are met and perceived by THE Room. THE Room reacts to whatever the visitor does. Without warning, it decides the encounter is over. The host rushes in to usher the visitor out, apologetic, explaining only that THE Room “is not feeling well” and does not wish to perceive anyone further. The host then turns to the others still waiting and delivers the same message: THE Room is unwell and does not wish to be perceived by anyone else today. The remaining visitors are asked to leave immediately.
Embodying Maas
Our collaboration resulted in a booklet exploring the maas as fluid entity through poems & hydrofeminism.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO EMBODY WATER?
Are we not all bodies of water?
Realising we are all bodies of water, and with “We” meaning all beings on earth, it becomes clear how closely tied together all living beings are in this planet's ecosystem. We should be in solidarity across our watery bodies. Hydrofeminism calls for accountability about our shared survival, pushing at the borders of the ideas of intersectional feminism.
Othering
(the humane movement)
sound recording & design,
participatory design, creating narrative
In this work we use the metaphor of an autoimmune system: a living body that mistakenly attacks itself. The autohumane disease that is othering, where humanity is attacking itself.
//I am something to be placed,
named, kept apart.//
We fight dehumanizing ideologies, divided societies, othering, censorship, self-censorship and restrictions of identities. We want to build a community where everyone feels welcomed and accepted. Our focus is on solidarity, connection, love, compassion and above all empathy to create new hope in people. We want to integrate and connect people, especially those who feel alienated. We want to create spaces and small moments of connection on a smaller and bigger scale, hoping this will have a chain reaction on how people view and treat each other. With our end goal of creating more empathy in the digital age.
After exiting the cortex, the audience was invited to take a zine.
Listen & read the stories of the installation:
//
What makes a human, HUMAN?
Is it the biological body?
Is it belonging, being recognized or spoken to?
Is it fitting into shared rules and nspoken norms?
Is it our ability to form structures?
Or our capacity to decide who belongs inside them?
Or is it the social power to decide who is included,
and who is kept outside the frame?
This work is about othering.
About how humans are shaped, pushed, measured, and named.
And about the moments we are made into the other
or make others into one.
As you listen, ask yourself:
When have I been shaped?
And when have I been the one shaping?
//Look at what they did to me.
I was pressed into a shape
I did not choose.
Every attempt to push back, only marked me further.
I know my worth.
Still, it is denied.
The shape tightens.
Expands beyond me.
Crushing from the outside, burning from within.
My blood boils, searching for release.
I ask myself— is this what it means to be human
inside their form?//
//A heavy pressure on my chest.
A cold sensation rushes over my body.
My limbs cannot move. It is cold. Why am I grasping for air?
Someone pushed me into freezing water. And now. Now I am sinking.
I want to scream, but no sound escapes.
As the surface grows farther away, light breaks apart above me.
I try to reach for them, but my arms move too slowly.
I can see them,
Unaware, uninterrupted, unbothered.
As I sink, parts of me disappear quietly.
Is one push enough to erase a person?//
//Their looks arrive first.
Sharp.
Silent.
Unavoidable.
They do not see me.
They watch me.
Judging.
Measuring.
Counting what fits and what does not.
I am no longer someone to be respected.
I am something to be placed, named, kept apart.
Their silence teaches me where I don’t belong.
Their gaze moves inside my body,
until their beliefs feel like my own.//
//They named me by what they feared.
I lived as someone’s shadow
insecure, wounded, afraid.
There is sickness.
It hurts.
It takes space.
But something resists.
It does not announce itself.
It does not ask to be seen.
And I stand,
not unbroken,
not unscarred,
but unmoved.
I insist on complexity.
On contradiction.
On being more than their measure.
I insist on who I am.
A human.//
Othering is not abstract.
It is practiced.
In the way we look.
In the shapes we enforce.
In who we allow to remain visible.
Before you leave, ask yourself:
Who have I shaped to feel smaller?
And who has shaped me?
What would it mean to let humanity remain unfinished, unmeasured, and shared?
(UN-wasted)
shown in expo in Erasmus MC
Through this conversation piece we highlight the connection between
e-waste and our bodies.
//IT COULD END UP IN YOUR BODY!//
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN
E-WASTE IS IMPROPERLY DISCARDED?
E-WASTE IS IMPROPERLY DISCARDED?
When e-waste is improperly discarded (in landfills), toxic materials leak into groundwater and this can and will eventually end up in food for living beings.
This results in harmful chemicals ending up in our bloodstream.
Ultimately its the entire planet that bears the costs of our pollution.
Confessions of a tree-
A root trough history
voice narration of the last tree
Guus Kentie
The audience was invited to enter the installation barefooted, walking in the soil, listening to the narratives, crouching down watching each specific video.
IN WHICH SENSE HAVE HUMANS COMMODIFIED NATURE IN RELATION TO THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT?
The narrative serves as an allegory, exploring the mystery of the tree and its future.
Listen & read the 5 stories:
A fox slinks through the undergrowth, careful but not fearful. Birds flit between my branches, their wings brushing the air like soft whispers. The rivers murmur in the distance, cutting paths through stone and moss, clear and cold. Everything knows its place. The seasons turn like breath—inhale, exhale. A quiet order beneath the wildness.
Storms come sometimes, tearing at my bark, twisting my branches. But I don’t mind. They pass, and I remain. My roots sink deeper, my leaves return. The sun always finds me again. That’s how it works here—nothing is lost, only remade. Growth is in the breaking. And there’s so much more ahead. I can feel it in the soil, in the hum beneath the ground. Something new is stirring.
A quiet shift in the air, a different rhythm threading itself into the old song. The earth is making room for something. Someone. I don’t fear it. Why would I? The world knows how to hold itself. Life has always found a way to stretch toward the light. And so will they whoever they are. Whatever they bring.//
Here and there they take some twigs for a fire. And to make tools for survival. As they have been doing for as long as I can remember. They are so creative, always looking for ways to survive. They have been digging lines in the soil next to me. I wonder what they’re up to this time!
All of a sudden, I feel a shock throughout my whole body. And although I have been living in harmony with humans for thousands of years, with one snap, I can feel that balance shifting. I feel that something is wrong right away. This time, the creaking and cracking sound wasn’t from the humans taking fruit, or some branches for a fire to keep warm. They are targeting my roots.. They are making space to cultivate. My survival is at stake.They don’t want unpredictable wilderness anymore. They want stability. Vast empty planes of land they will sow with a million seeds of the same plant. They don’t want diversity. They want uniformity. Uaagghhh!! It must be...
For the.... greater... good......//
There are no children really anymore though. The swing is barely being used. And there is a path surrounding me, I’m in this weird hole. It actually has severed some of my roots, I can’t feel them anymore. It has made it hard, or even impossible to connect to other trees. I’m pretty scared to be honest, there are all these sounds around me the whole time. It doesn’t seem to stop. But what scares me the most is that I’m sensing a lot more carbon dioxide in the air. I don’t need that much. I might be wrong, I’m not sure. I wish to ask others. But I can’t reach them anymore, so I don’t know if they sense it as well.
If im honest, it’s pretty lonely. I feel like I don’t even know the neighbourhood that is my home. Im all alone. I guess the encompassing sounds will have to do as company. But it just stresses me out a lot. I think humans might be building something close by. It makes even more noise. And there is this material with which they keep coming by. I don’t know what it is exactly. I have never seen it till recently. It’s very shiny and comes in these different linear forms. It looks weird. I don’t know what these humans will do with it and why they need so much. It just all makes a lot of sound, and every time they work, it gets really gross everywhere. I don’t know what is happening, and will happen, but I have a bad feeling about it.//
Last year we had intense flooding that almost swept me away…This autumn it hasn’t dropped a single raindrop…Ugh…this heat…I can feel it drying me up from the roots…Why is it getting hotter? The sun’s supposed to set soon…Is that screaming??!! Wait…whats all that smoke I can taste??!! IS THAT A FIRE??!!OH MY FUCKING GODD it’s BURNING ME ALIVE!! AAAAAHHHHHHH!!//
I miss it. I miss the warm sun, the funky wind, the soil I shared with my ancestors and above all the voices of my fellow trees. The wind carried their laughter for miles, I can still hear them sometimes, I must have gone insane from the solitude. There was nothing worse than the silence after their screams. One by one they disappeared, I searched for them with my roots. All I found was decapitated stumps left and right. I was so heartbroken it almost killed me, but I endured. I had to survive for my family. Not long after, humans in white suits brought me to this place. At first I was hopeful of a better future, but that later turned into resentment of these ever watching eyes.//