Drug using Spidermen

Me & You on a Golden Avenue by Saskia Janssen at Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Rozengracht 207-A (until April 4, 2009). Central to the exhibition (opened last Saturday) is the publication Blaka Watra Spiders, in which Janssen (b. 1968) reports on her encounters in the Blaka Watra user's room in Amsterdam during the period 2006-2008. 

This book (Roma Publications 127) includes an intriguing series of drawings of spider webs. Inspired by a famous scientific experiment done in the fifties by Dr. Peter Witt, in which he gave drugs to spiders and observed their effects on web building, Janssen also asked the visitors of Blaka Watra to draw a spider web. Not because she wants to compare them with spiders, but because she was interested in the way that the drawings would display their individual characters.

A selection of the drawings (with words like 'coke' and 'heroin' written on them, referring to the drugs used while making them) are on display in the gallery. Next to several other works, all made with, by and for Blaka Watra's visitors (who share their roots in Surinam, which explains for instance a small bowl high in the air, almost touching the ceiling of the gallery, resting on a long wooden stick: a voudou-related object that should insure good fortune).

The press release states – almost defensively – that Janssen has no 'good intentions', it's not her goal to improve the situation of the users. She only wanted to become acquainted with them, and the works were produced as a result of this contact.