Julia Janssen
Julia Janssen is an artist, speaker, and ambassador for data protection. She explores the influence of data, AI, and technology on our physical environment and creates interactive and performative installations to provide her audience with insight into the challenges of our digitizing world. How do we deal with equality, freedom, fairness, autonomy, and democracy in a data-driven society? As an ambassador of Stichting Data Bescherming Nederland, she represents legal cases against X./Twitter, Amazon, and Adobe.
She has received several awards for her work and is regularly featured in the media. Some highlights include:
– In February 2024, Julia won the title FD talent, an annual list of ’50 under 35′ featuring young, innovative, talented, and promising entrepreneurs who are advancing the world with their innovative ideas.
– In October 2023, she won the Rise25 Award, presented by Mozilla to 25 visionaries reshaping our digital future, in honor of Mozilla’s 25th anniversary.
– In June 2023, she was featured on the cover of Dutch opinion magazine Vrij Nederland.
– In August 2022, she appeared on the Human/Brainwash Talkshow: How Intelligent is AI? The first talkshow entirely focused on the influence of digitization on our society.
– In 2019, her project “0.0146 seconds” made the front page of the Dutch quality newspaper De Volkskrant.
– In 2016, she won the Crypto Design Award with her graduation project “Bank of Online Humanity.”
She graduated from ArtEZ University of the Arts in Graphic Design in 2016. During her studies, she became interested in data and digitization and worked on various projects that highlighted our relationship with technology. It was a period of whistleblowers and scandals, of tech optimism and ‘I have nothing to hide.’ Making the theme urgent was challenging, but Janssen persevered. With her graduation project, she won the Crypto Design Award, and since then, she has dedicated her art to data sovereignty.
Julia translates scientific insights into accessible designs, giving her audience a glimpse beneath the surface of the internet. By making the complexity of information technology understandable, she builds a movement that strives for data sovereignty: ultimately, everyone should be able to consciously choose who knows what about them. Her projects and presentations focus on data collection infrastructures, the power of Big Tech, the (monetary) value of data, bias in algorithms, profiling, digital identity, life within algorithms, and digital civil rights such as informed consent and the right to be forgotten.
One of these projects, “One Click / 0.0146 seconds” (2019), immediately gained her recognition. The book “One Click” is a collection of 835 privacy policies that are agreed to with one click on ‘got it’ when visiting the Dailymail website. Janssen continued this project into the reading performance “0.0146 seconds,” a traveling studio where participants read aloud from the book in 12-minute fragments. Hundreds of people participated, including well-known figures in the field such as internet pioneer Marleen Stikker and European Parliament member Paul Tang. The work also led to parliamentary questions when former vice-faction leader of GroenLinks Kathalijne Buitenweg mentioned Janssen’s work in her opening statement about the future of the information society.
The work “Dear data, how do you decide my future?” debuted in 2022 at Lowlands. An interactive installation about the decision-making process of algorithms – and why it’s not neutral. Consisting of thousands of ping-pong balls with her own personal data and a number of games and video installations about data and profiling. The work has since been exhibited in dozens of places. Last year, she developed the installation “Mapping the Oblivion” for the Venice Architecture Biennale. A work that explores the space between frictionlessness and the right to oblivion. As we increasingly live within the margins of the algorithm, what does it mean to be human? Earlier, she designed the publication “Non-discrimination by design” commissioned by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations and in collaboration with Tilburg University and the Human Rights Institute.
Expertise
Julia speaks with enthusiasm, in an accessible manner, about the complexity of data and algorithms. Just like in her art, she provides personal examples in her presentations, making the impact tangible and more understandable. She takes her audience behind the surface of the internet and reveals startling findings, as well as humorous examples.
In addition to her expertise in data, Julia also gives lectures on interdisciplinarity and co-creation. As an artist and ambassador for data protection, she is constantly working to connect expertise, fields, and media. In these presentations, she shares her research and working methods. She provides advice on how to organize innovative collaborations or how to create new connections, combinations, and redefinitions within organizations.
Julia gave an inspiring keynote. She was very professional in all aspects and it was great fun to work with her. I am looking forward to continuing collaboration and I would book a keynote again.
— York Sure-Vetter, Direktor NFDI, 1st Conference on Research Data Infrastructure – September 2023
Julia Janssen in Tegenlicht: The battle for the Internet
Julia Janssen Re-Value, Dutch Design Week 2020 (from 7:11)
Julia Janssen at For Starters, Dutch Design Week (from 21:25)
