My practice is research-based and multi-disciplinary including film, photography, sculpture and installation. My practice focuses on the points where culture intersects with other fields of enquiry. The works themselves can be seen as a form of speculative-fiction; partly based on facts and research but often brought into the realm of the imagination. 

My work is concerned with residues of enlightenment ideology, manifestations of collective memory, blind spots of representation. My working method interweaves and investigates collective narratives in relation to the commons, broadly construed. For the past two decades I have realised projects on various types of knowledge production including social history museums, fields of scientific enquiry and forms of collective imagination.

Collaborations with other artists, thinkers and experts are an important part of my life and practice as an artist and have been a key motivation to co-found Enough Room for Space in 2005. I strongly believe that the critical challenges that at the core of On-Trade-Off can best be faced collectively and from a multitude of perspectives and artistic voices. 

Marjolijn Dijkman (1978, NL) lives and works in Brussels (BE) & Saint-Mihiel (FR), graduated from the free media department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam in 2001, the MFA Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam in 2003 and was a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht in 2006 - 2007. Marjolijn has had solo shows at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, US (2020); Munch Museum, Oslo, NO (2018); NOME, Berlin, DE (2018); Fig. 2 at ICA, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK (2015); West Space, Melbourne, AU (2015); IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2011); The Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, US (2010); and international group shows such as Future Genealogies, 6th Lubumbashi Biennale, DRC (2019); Ecology - lost, found, continued, 4th Screen City Biennale, Stavanger, NO (2019); SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium and Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney, AU (2018); Why Not Ask Again?, 11th Shanghai Biennale, CN (2016); Screaming and Hearing, 7th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, BR (2009) and 'Still life, Art, Ecology and the Politics of Change', 8th Sharjah Biennial, UAE (2007).

Depth of Discharge, Marjolijn Dijkman, film in progress 

‘Depth of Discharge’ investigates how electricity as a natural science has been linked to economics and enlightenment ideals since the 18th century. This frame is brought in relation to the specific post-colonial, geological and ecological context of the prospective lithium mine in Manono in DR Congo.

Discharge, as a concept, is the main protagonist in the project to speculate about balance, excess and debt in relation to energy, economy and ecology. Marjolijn Dijkman will work visually with an electrical discharge photography technique where electricity itself and the different radiating objects and subjects will become the visual elements of the story.

The discharge plate used for electro-photography is made with a plexiglass sheet with a tin coating, exactly the same material as used in touch screens for devices. Besides minerals and vegetation from Manono, coins, electronic devices, hands and fingertips will be featured. The narrative of the essay film will explore these ideas and experiments in relation to electric discharge and the specific context of Manono.

“‘Depth of Discharge’ reflects on the ambiguous intertwining of electricity and enlightenment, the promises of modernity and its material counterparts. It operates between fact and fiction in order to challenge the ideological hegemony of Western Science.” (Marjolijn Dijkman)