Shot on Sight: Inside Nelly Dansen’s Trespassing Manifestation

Ever caught your gaze slipping through the open curtains of a stranger’s home? That peculiar pull, curiosity edging into voyeurism, floods your body with a thrill, the kind that feels a little too close to a forbidden act. 

Through their fleeting manifestations, Amsterdam-based performance art collective Trespassing seeks to capture exactly that: the strange intimacy of seeing without being seen. For their latest performance this past May, they took over a ground-floor window on Geldersekade, inviting artist Nelly Dansen to inhabit the exposed space for three days. Nelly pushed the concept further, transforming the setup into a kind of panopticon, a live exploration of what it means to be both the observer and the observed. 

A statuesque blonde and self-described Bimbo, Nelly Dansen is no stranger to being looked at. Her work explores the multifaceted nature of identity, examining the interplay of gender, sexuality and societal expectations. Drawing from feminist theory, queer philosophy and lived experience, Nelly uses her practice to challenge the status quo, or in her own words, to reinvent ‘whatever the F this crazy Wild World means through the lens of the bimbo’. 

For her performance with Trespassing, Smile 🙂 You’re on camera, Nelly assumed the role of the Head of Gaze Operations, layering voyeurism onto her ongoing exploration of power and perception. Inside a ground-floor room resembling a bedroom, she surrounded herself with posters, books, and visual cues, from Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, offering subtle prompts on surveillance and the politics of looking. Reclined in revealing clothes, she appeared at ease, sipping, snacking, scrolling. But at closer inspection, the ‘TV’ she was watching revealed to be a surveillance screen, with a camera pointing outwardly to the street. With her back to the audience and her own gaze turned towards the screen, Nelly silently scanned the passersby through her CCTV, observing the observers. 

Standing outside was strange. You were pulled into watching Nelly and the memorabilia surrounding her, posters, books, a bedroom turned surveillance hub, only to realize you were being watched too. Your own image flickered on a screen in the center of the room, making you part of the performance whether you wanted it or not. I had just landed from Georgia, where facial recognition tracks every protester’s move. Seeing myself framed on a surveillance feed, this time by an artist, not the state, triggered the same unease. My body tensed, my awareness sharpened, and for a moment, I second-guessed every move I made. 

The performance, brilliant on its own, took an eerie layer of surreality when it accidentally became a crime scene. Just before the opening night, as Nelly prepared to draw the curtain, a shootout happened in front of the window. Police tape went up, and the street shut down. Soon enough, the police barged into the room, using Nelly’s performance camera as evidence of the crime; the tool meant to criticize the surveillance state became its own device. 

A couple of weeks later, I sat down with Nelly to hear her reflections on the surreal crime scene, explore the inspirations behind her work, and discuss her future plans.

Anastasia: Can you tell me a bit about yourself? Is there a particular message you aim to convey through your art?

Nelly: Through my work, I deep dive into the complexities of identity, exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, and societal expectations (ugh… not those expectations… boring!). I embrace the derogatory stereotype of a bimbo in all her honesty and push the hyper-femme agenda by celebrating femininity and challenging conventional norms of womanhood. This approach is also connected to my exploration of the boundaries of what film can be and mean beyond Hollywood-set-standards, as I did in my piece ‘Head Over Heels’. My work often situates itself in unexpected spaces (just like myself, btw), such as the director’s office at the Royal Academy of Art. 

A: How did you develop your latest performance for Trespassing, Head of Gaze Operations? Each object in the window seemed to reference the idea of surveillance or being watched. Did the literature you included play a key role in shaping the concept?

N: Oh god, where to begin. So many angles. I think I started shaping the concept when I got a bit tired of having the Bimbo as a central point in my work. What I loved most about making my debut film Head Over Heels, a feverish bimbo manifesto-esque zeitgeist fictional documentary, were the scenes where I was with a lot of other characters. Film really is my medium of choice; and my yearning to create another world with characters as powerful as the bimbo side by side became my new goal. 

I decided after only having 2 years of art school experience, a MA Artscience at KABK, that I wanted to refine my craft a bit further and applied for the Master Artist’s Film and Moving Image at Goldsmiths in London – and got accepted!!! (yay I’m moving to london in September). I applied with a film plan that I wanted to make in an escape room. Have 6 characters trapped in a room that basically sets the script. I believe an escape room can represent both a literal and metaphorical prison; and I want to create one that, in its games and themes, reflects larger systems of control.

Anyways; ever since I got accepted I’ve been collecting money for my tuition fee. So I got a side job at an escape room, which felt like the perfect place to earn money AND gain insight. I got hired as an escape room operator, which literally translates to Big Brother. During my shifts I would be watching 4 cameras from a control room and be in contact with the players via a walkie talkie. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt like I was in a more powerful position, and I’m not sure if I liked that particular feeling – but o-my-god; this side job is so fun. 

In February and March this year I did a residency in Switzerland; where I did a lot of research for this film. I read Simulation and Simulacra, Society of the Spectacle and Foucault’s The Birth of the Prison. Shortly after I came back to Amsterdam Puck approached me for this manifestation; I immediately wanted to do something with this hyperreal panopticon-esque structure; as the whole concept of The Living Room series is about peeking into the private. Most of the books and references in the room; like the yassified posters of Orwell, Deleuze, Foucault, the books, the laptop screening Big Brother USA season 12 are all little crumbs that I’ve been collecting for my escape room movie.

A: The third essay in John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, part of the literature present in your performance, analyzes female nudes and contrasts how women and men are perceived: ‘The surveyor of woman is herself male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object — and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.’ As a woman, how did your identity influence this performance? What was it like to literally and physically become both the observer and the observed?

N: As a woman, that quote resonates deeply. And it makes sense that my identity shaped the performance, how could it not? To quote my friend Matilda Elofsson: ‘Who cares about a bunch of cameras when you’ve already been self-surveilling since the dawn of puberty.’ That really captures it. Not to sound too paranoid haha, but I’ve always felt watched and being a woman has everything to do with that. My height plays into it too.

That feeling of being hyper-visible intensified last year, after I was deported from the U.S. Two border officers at passport control asked about my profession and my art. It quickly spiraled into a situation where stereotypes were projected onto me — all based on assumptions and a misreading of Head Over Heels and my master thesis ‘Nelly Dansen: A Girl or A Concept?’ (yes they watched my film and read my master thesis at the border). They accused me of being an escort and sent me back.

I won’t get into whether I am or I’m not, that’s not the point. The point is how fragile your identity becomes when systems decide to see you in a certain way. That moment was the most eye-to-eye I’ve ever come with The System… Since then, I’ve become more cautious, especially about my digital footprint.

It’s kind of ironic: the performance was literally about visibility, but on the second day — after all the chaos on Thursday — I was so scattered I forgot to care what I looked like. I didn’t do my hair, didn’t bring a bra that matched the outfit. But there’s something strangely funny — or maybe painfully fitting — about becoming ‘the observed’ while not even performing for the gaze in the traditional sense. It reminded me that visibility isn’t always about being looked at in the way you intended — sometimes, it’s about being interpreted, misread, or surveilled in ways completely outside your control.

A: Did you intend for the audience to feel a certain way? What were you hoping they would take away from the performance?

N: I didn’t necessarily want the audience to feel a specific way — that would be too controlling, and ironically, would replicate the kind of authority the work is critiquing. But I did want them to become aware. Not really of surveillance in the traditional sense actually (CCTV, systems, institutions), but of the quiet, intimate kind we carry inside ourselves.

Because we don’t need cameras to feel watched anymore. We do it to ourselves, constantly,  in the digital age, where our image precedes us. We curate, post, scroll, swipe. Always half a second ahead of ourselves, editing as we go. That’s what I really wanted to explore: how the gaze doesn’t just come from outside. It moves inward. 

I think that’s why the performance felt so personal to me. It mirrored a larger reality I’ve been living in, especially since I created NELLY DANSEN, my online alter ego. At first, I thought I was constructing her, shaping her identity as a tool, a persona, a character. But at some point, the dynamic shifted. It started to feel like she was creating me. Or maybe more accurately: I was watching her watching me. That’s the paradox of digital identity, you’re the observer and the observed, the puppet and the puppeteer.

Besides that, the piece was not only just about being seen; it was about the power structures embedded in seeing, and how those get mapped onto our bodies, behaviors, and self-conception. I remember working at a nightclub and one of the house rules was something along the lines of ‘don’t stare at someone too long — it can be harassment’  That rule really stuck with me. It reminded me that the gaze, even when passive, can still be invasive, or even violent.

A: The opening day of your performance was interrupted by a shooting right outside your window. How did you feel at that moment? I can only imagine how frightening it must have been.

N: I think at that moment I hardly felt anything; I think it was panic taking over my body. It was shortly after when the severity of the situation hit. Puck and I walked outside to check if everything was safe again, and I guess I was still so startled that I closed the door behind me with the keys left inside. So on top of everything we were also locked outside. 

A: I later learned that the camera featured in your performance was used by police as evidence. How did that unexpected turn of events influence or reshape the meaning of your work? What was it like to continue the performance after such a traumatic event? 

N: I wrote a statement the same night it happened. I was laying in bed with my mind spinning like crazy. I couldn’t fully grasp all the layers of the whole situation yet so I wrote the following to make a bit more sense out of it for myself. 

‘During final prep for SMILE 🙂 You’re on Camera, a violent incident happened right outside the gallery. A man was stabbed in front of the installation and later shot in the leg further down the street. Police showed up quickly and blocked off the entire area. Luckily, the victim is physically okay.

From inside the space, we watched everything unfold in real time through the surveillance camera I set up as part of the work—originally meant to explore visibility, power, and control—making for a disturbingly dystopian moment.

What happened went beyond performance.

The installation, meant to question the panoptic gaze, became part of the very system it was critiquing.

After things settled, we walked  outside for a bit to decompress. When we came back, we found out the police had entered the gallery without asking or explaining. They moved beneath posters of Foucault, Orwell, and Deleuze—the thinkers behind the work—as if silently witnessing this crossover between theory and reality. The installation was treated like evidence, and IT specialists tried to pull footage from the surveillance camera.

At that point, the staged reversal of power fell apart. The artist got turned into data custodian under the watchful eye of the state. While the work positioned itself as Head of Gaze Operations, the real gaze—the state’s gaze—showed up in uniform. The irony was thick.

The whole thing felt Baudrillardian: the line between simulation and reality completely disappeared. What was supposed to be a critical performance blended right into the system it was critiquing—a hyperreal moment where both folded into one.

This highlights a larger truth about surveillance culture: critical actions get absorbed and reused by the very systems they challenge. The gaze does more than watch—it controls and consumes.

The room watched. The room was watched.

The gaze became real, not just symbolic.

This wasn’t the night anyone expected.

But somehow, it reveals truths clearer than any script could.’

A: What are your upcoming plans? In what direction do you see your work evolving in the near future?

N: I believe I am at a point where NELLY DANSEN is evolving beyond an individual entity into something broader—a concept, an attitude, or a work method. I see NELLY DANSEN as more than just a character; she is a lens through which to explore broader social dynamics. The approach embedded in the NELLY DANSEN way of working seeks to amplify feminist queer perspectives and challenge heteronormative narratives, as well as The System at large. By The System, I am referring to the CHPC™: a world governed by Cis-Heteronormative Patriarchal Capitalism. The words of the queer anarchist collective The Mary Nardini Gang have always resonated with me: ‘Queer is a territory of tension, defined against the dominant narrative of white hetero monogamous patriarchy. It is a rejection of the regime of the Normal. Queer is not a being; queer is a doing.’

By aiming to work more closely and collaboratively with a diverse spectrum—schooled and unschooled artists, sex workers, and filmmakers—I want to write and work on more complex, multi-layered narratives. Like how I did in Head Over Heels but then make it even more over the top. I strive for this approach in the process of making my next film. I picture a world of wild, anarchistic, detailed characters and intersecting storylines that challenge traditional patriarchal structures and Hollywood’s way of filmmaking. This method also draws inspiration from anarchistic principles and lets me stay true to my punk roots while engaging with contemporary issues in a meaningful way!

…. aaaaand besides that: you can find me at PROSPECTS during Art Rotterdam and at my graduation show in London!!! and I am having a very special Solo Show in Switzerland next year. 

xoxo NELLY