24-06-2025 (English version below): Francisca Markus heeft ongeveer drie weken geresideerd in De Ruimte. Tijdens haar residentie heeft zij van De Ruimte gebruik gemaakt om onderzoek te doen naar, en aan de slag te gaan met nieuw werk. Vlak voor het einde van de residentie gaan we in gesprek met Francisca over hoe zij haar residentie heeft ervaren. Wegens de spreektaal van Francisca is onderstaand interview in het Engels. Wil je meer beeld bij het verhaal? Check dan @deruimtedeventer op Instagram.
Francisca Markus resided approximately three weeks at De Ruimte. During her residency, she used De Ruimte to conduct research and work on a new project. Just before the end of the residency, we sat down with Francisca to talk about how she experienced her time at De Ruimte. As Francisca’s preferred spoken language is English, the interview below is conducted in English. Rather watch this interview as a video? Check out @deruimtedeventer on Instagram.
Can you introduce yourself?
“My name is Francisca Markus. I am an artist and I moved to Deventer almost two years ago from Hamburg. I studied fine arts in Hamburg, at the academy.”
You’re an artist, what is it that you make?
“I have a very, I would say, versatile practice. I work mainly on installations and often call them performative installations, so there’s always a performative element. I’m also part of a collective called Young Valley Soil, with three friends of mine. It’s a little broad what I do but in De Ruimte I am working on a film.”
You moved to Deventer two years ago, why?
“Basically because my boyfriend got a job here. We lived together in Hamburg for a while and I was finishing my studies there, then he got the job here and I wanted a little change.”
Do you like it?
“Yes I like it! It’s very different, of course as it’s a smaller city but it comes with a lot of beautiful aspects and you see the same people again and again here and there. You get a much quicker feeling for the place and I find the people that live here very friendly.”
You did a residency here, in De Ruimte, how long was it?
“I did my residency for almost three weeks.”
Why did you want to do this residency?
“I wanted to do the residency in the De Ruimte because I like to work with scores; I like to set myself a neat framework in which I can work. So I thought that it would be interesting for me to work in this space that is not my studio, where I also have a set time frame where I can do something and use that as a basis. It was also a nice way for me to arrive a bit here in Deventer and to even invite people to show what I’m doing.”
So you have your own studio as well?
“Yes.”
How is this different from your own studio?
“During the first days I thought that it was not different at all, I thought it was just more stress because you have to think about more space. But I realized very quickly that it’s super nice because it’s like a capsule. In my studio I have these ongoing things that I’m doing, there are projects that I’m not happy about and a lot of open trains of thoughts. Here there’s nothing, I see traces of the residents who were here before me, but besides that, I only bring in what I need, so that’s a huge difference.”
“Also, it is this kind of ‘winkel’, it has this storefront that allows you to constantly see what is happening outside. I had the doors open and you hear the trees or the ‘Draaiorgel’ on Fridays. You’re much more participating in what is happening outside.”
What did you make? Or what were you doing the past three weeks?
“I came in with the idea to work on a film with footage that I took on a travel with my mother almost three years ago when we traveled to Namibia. I have had this footage since then and I haven’t touched it. I thought this would be a nice moment to touch it again, in this closed space and time.”
What is the film about?
“Well, It’s not that easy to answer. The film is accompanying us on this travel we did through Namibia. It has a lot of footage shot from inside the car to the outside, driving through for example Windhoek (the capital of Namibia) but also from driving up north to a national park. Following this road, it kind of opened a lot of topics: it’s about me and my mother, it’s about language because my mother is from Chile, so we speak a German and Spanish mixture all of the time but it’s not entirely about language, it’s like a side road. It’s a film along the road and just like the road, it has a lot of side roads that the film enters.”
Why Namibia?
“It was a dream travel of my mother’s for a long time, ever since a friend of hers moved to Namibia to be a bush pilot, she does these safari tours with a helicopter. But I was curious to go because it used to be a German colony and I was curious to find out more about it and to learn more about that past.”
Is that past also incorporated in the video?
“Yes, because it’s almost impossible to not encounter that colonial past. It’s everywhere in the public space, you see streets named after German colonisers, for example the Bismarck straße (the German king from the time), you have all this presence in the public space.”
“But it also goes beyond that. Once you drive through the main road you see left and right these farms and not all, but I think like 70% of agricultural land possession is still in the hands of like 0.3% of the population, the Germans (figures from a research study from Forensic Architecture). It’s super absurd to drive these roads and be surrounded by these farms with German names.”
So they’re still there, basically?
“Yes, and I mean, it’s unresolved because it’s descendants from families who live there, who grew up there. So I think it’s really a conflict that is hard to encounter and to resolve. I don’t think that they want to move back to Germany or something like that. They have lives there but of course they are descendants and they inherited it.”
Is this a theme throughout all of your work or the other things you create?
“I like to think my work is more about public space. I like to encounter public spaces in different ways and how it is also a part of a private place, but also how you are part of it as a private person. So colonization is not part of my practice that I elaborate, but I have made works with public spaces where I encounter colonization.”
What did you achieve during your residency? Did you finish the film?
“I wanted to finish the film, but I had this image at some point during a conversation that it’s really this long road and I went into these side roads so it’s like an endless thing. I still have a few days to work on it, and I will show a film, but it may not be the final edit. I can imagine that it goes a bit further.”
Were there more things that you wanted to achieve during the residency?
“Before I started the residency I had the idea to invite more people in during the process to partake in the process or to even bring in their own works. But I felt the first weeks that I needed the time to really work through this material and for example by just giving every clip a little name.”
Every single clip?
“Yes, it was part of, I suppose, structuring and organizing the material and to understand what I filmed, maybe why I filmed that and to see what interests me in that film material. So I realized if I would have invited a lot of people from a lot of different places into here, I wouldn’t have had that time to really work with the material.”
So, you are going to showcase the film at the end of your residency? Can you tell me more about that?
“Yes, I will make a little screening set up and invite people over for two evenings to just come by and see the film. It will be running on a loop and I will have some drinks and snacks. I hope some people will come and have a look because so far I only showed it to like two people and now I’m curious for that moment of showing the film in a public setting.”
Do you show it with a certain goal? Like, do you want people to give you feedback or do you want to take opinions about it into the finishing of the film?
“The goal with showing it for me, I think for sure, is to get feedback. And of course I hope that people share their feelings after watching it. Maybe from there on I consider some edits or so, but I could also imagine not considering it.” [Laughs]
What are you going to do with the film once it’s finished?
“I will put it on my website and I would like to think of ways how I could show this film, maybe more as an installation. Here I will make a very simple set up with a beamer and some kind of frame with textile that I will project it on. But I would like to think of a different setup. I was looking up if I can find car seats that I can place here in the room but you’ll need like 20 car seats and that’s not so easy. [Laughs]
You already spoke a little bit about what made this residency special. But were there other things that made this residency special for you?
“I think what mainly made the residency special was really that you have this space which is very… It’s very used, but it’s this white canvas. Like there are some materials, there’s a table that I was rolling around with, but that’s it. The space brings its own little characteristics or maybe modules or so that you can swap everything around how you like and need it… Sometimes I was working in the corner and then I was putting my table here to the front. It has this kind of flexibility that my studio doesn’t have. That’s kind of the difference, what made it special.”
Do you have any tips for future residents?
“Open the door on hot days so De Ruimte also gets a bit warm, because it’s still cold in the summer.” [Laughs]
“And there are also some nice places next to De Ruimte to get a nice beer or to get some nice food. Also the bookstore across the street. De Ruimte is positioned in a nice place.”
Did this street impact you or your work as well?
“I didn’t necessarily have personal contact with people on the street but I worked for a long time close to the door and while editing I like to look out and look at what and who passes. There were also a few neighbors listening to music so I was Shazamming some music, so there were these kinds of anonymous encounters.”
Where can we find you? Or where can we see the work when it’s finished?
“Once it’s finished, I will put the work on my website, www.franciscamarkus.com, and you can find me on Instagram, @franc.ma. And maybe at some future exhibition, with the film in another setting, you know?” [Laughs]
Francisca was the tenth of twelve residences we are organizing at De Ruimte in 2025. In addition to providing a physical space, we also offer our residents online visibility. Want to stay updated on the residencies? Or do you want to see more of their story? Then check out @deruimtedeventer on Instagram!
Written by: Niek van Steen
