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is a media art curator and researcher. With an interest in digital culture in all its complexity and absurdity, she explores topics such as networked image culture, digital metaphors, and human labour and productivity in the face of technology. She reflects upon these predominantly through curated programs, publications, and interventions in the exhibition space.

Marijn has worked with IMPAKT Centre for Media Culture, the Young Curators Academy, The Wrong Biennale, CIVA Festival, and Institute of Network Cultures. Currently, she studies in the Erasmus Mundus Joint Excellence Master Media Arts Cultures, at the universities of Krems (AT), Aalborg (DK), and Łódź (PL).

Are you there? (MicroPOM Aalborg, 2022)

Postponed Until Further Notice (The Wrong Biennale, 2022)

In Defense of the Burning Image (IMAI Play, 2021)

Nuclear Aesthetics (IMPAKT Channel, 2021)

When I Look Through My Browser Window I Can Feel the Fresh Air (CIVA Festival, 2021)

In Search of Silence's Image (Simulacrum, 2021)

Going Online: Metaphors, Strategies, and Meanings of Translating Cultural Events to the Internet (Institute for Network Cultures, 2021)

Architectonische bubbels: niet iedereen houdt van brutalisme (Archined, 2021)

Architectural Filter Bubbles: On the Society for the Nonpreservation of Brutalism (Institute for Network Cultures, 2020)

Anonymous Footnoteater (iMAL, 2022)

Watch Me Work (CPDP Conference, 2021–2022)

Language As Apparatus: Deconstructing Terminologies (CIVA Festival, 2022)

Watch Me Work (CPDP Conference)
Research fellowship with Werktank (BE), IMPAKT (NL), and PrivacySalon (BE) as part of Computers, Privacy & Data Protection conference (Brussels, 2021–2022)

The contemporary digital work environment favours technocratic values of efficiency, productivity, and engagement. Microsoft’s widely used productivity software MyAnalytics plays into this by turning e-mails into metrics, graphs, and diagrams. The software monitors how many mails someone sends, the time spent writing them, and how many colleagues the sender communicates with and for how long. However, none of these metrics can grasp the content and nuances of interpersonal communication. As mailing culture becomes subject to quantitative metrics and productivity scores, qualitative output is measured through quantitative metrics.

In its insights on wellbeing, MyAnalytics asks, ‘Are you able to disconnect and recharge?’. When technological language is used to discuss human wellbeing, what does that imply? Are we solely ‘recharging’ to restart the working day fresh to get productive? Today’s workers are hyperemployed. The office moves into the bedroom as users easily switch between work and leisure with a few clicks on the same device. MyAnalytics continues to monitor employees outside of working hours, turning wellbeing into a productivity metric. The software reinforces a work-life balance by paradoxically crossing the boundaries between work and non-work.

Watch Me Work presents three fictional characters – based on interviews with workers – who respond to MyAnalytics’ wellbeing monitoring. After working hours, the characters repeatedly send MyAnalytics e-mail updates as they anxiously try to keep up with tasks - sometimes falling asleep, only to be woken up again by notifications. Tired, overwhelmed, and overworked, their mails give overly detailed reports, insights into their thoughts and moods, or reveal attempts at outsmarting their algorithmic boss. By emphasising the quantification of labour, Watch Me Work questions (meaningless) productivity at the expense of actually wellbeing.

The final installation was presented at CPDP Conference 2022 as part of the PrivacyTopia Showcase at Area 42 in Brussels, on 23–25/05/2022.

The research has been presented at various presentations, a.o. as the talk Are you able to disconnect and recharge? On digital labour, quantification, and technological metaphors at the Digital Agora of the Young Curators Academy 2021, hosted by Maxim Gorki Theatre (click here for the recording).