Lisa Meijer is a Rotterdam-based visual artist, researcher, and cultural mediator. With a background in visual arts, museology, and artificial intelligence, her practice focuses on developing conceptual tools to think about society and technology. As a freelance mediator, she tries to apply at her scale the values inherent to her practice and vision by introducing herself as someone who walks with people, asks questions, and generates discussions. By evoking political struggles, paradoxes, and not-so-casual anecdotes, Lisa aims to spark visitors' curiosity and critical thinking about art and institutions. A successful mediation, for her, is validated by the visitors recognition of the inspiration, confusion, and reflection they experienced.
Visitors (2023) - A guided tour at The Depot.
Rendez-vous à l’oratoire - Image : Verso of the visiting card distributed before my speech on Anne of Britany (a french queen of the Renaissance) at La Cité de l'Architecture in Paris. I consider this project as a first essay to explore the limits between fiction and reality in the discourse of a guided tour. This idea will be developed further in my next projects.
Scum, Multi-media installation (visualization), Group show, Les Brasseurs, Liège 2016 - The installation explores the concept of borders and the interplay between physical and conceptual limits. In a dark room, a map-like representation of the sea stands out, symbolizing both the longing to escape and the impossibility of finding refuge elsewhere. Accompanying the visual element is the sub-aquatic sound of the 52 hertz whale, known as the loneliest whale in the ocean due to its unsuccessful attempts to communicate with other whales. Visitors play a pivotal role in the installation, as their actions can transform its aesthetics and meaning. The floor is covered with invisible firecrackers. As visitors move, the firecrackers explode, creating amplified sounds and initially deterring further exploration. However, upon realizing that the sea itself is composed of firecrackers, visitors are encouraged to step on it, challenging the installation's metaphorical boundaries and reshaping its significance.
Tailored concepts, 2020 - Left : User-value topography for a service media recommender system. Right : Tailored concept for a value-sensitive public service media recommender system. These experimental visualizations represent the research, as well as the results of the research that I conducted at Creating 010 (Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences) in the area of Ethics and Artificial Intelligence. My role was to find human values to integrate into the Nederlandse Publieke Omroep movie recommender system. The visualization on the left represents the values analyzed in qualitative interviews of potential users. The visualization on the right illustrates the values that emerged the most during the analysis (core user values). The diamond shape refers to the NPO logo which I use here as a conceptual boundary.
Turnaround (flyer visual), 2018 - Installation in collaboration with Arnaud Eubelen at the Space Gallery in Liège
IM-U, 2016 - Mute book (no text), based on experiences of expectation and boredom, that visually develops a spiritual hypothesis according to which the state of contemplation is preceded by phases of waiting and boredom. The book is made up of three chapters, each represented by a pictogram. The three pictograms of each chapter form on the front cover the title of the book, the letter equivalent of which is « IM-U ».
The unborn image, thesis, 2016 - Coming back from a trip to Eastern Europe, I realize that my analog camera was dysfunctional: after the photographic development, no image appears on the films which are transparent. Despite the absence of image, this transparent object is a photograph. What makes this non-image a photograph? And what makes this photograph an unborn image? This literature-based research (e.g. Ghost Image by Hervé Guibert) constructs a photographic interpretation tool based on the modes of image absence that characterize the unborn image. This interpretation tool is then tested on a body of photographs which express the aesthetic of unborn.
