This article is an interview between Willem de Rooij and Anna-Sophie Springer. de Rooij discusses his methodology for installation, employing objects around film projections alluding to a presence and absence of projection. The objects in his exhibitions are often appropriated from other artists challenging traditional notions which define curatorial practice, museological methods and authorship. Collaboration is also a central theme in de Rooij's practice. By exhibiting his work alongside artworks by deceased artists he plays with the boundaries between appropriation and collaboration, and authorship.

As the title, Colonizing the Exhibition Space suggests, one of the central questions surrounds authorship of the space in which art is positioned and exhibited. de Rooij tries to avoid the position of star artist-curator however re-contextualizes and creates the architecture and space around his pieces which could be understood as curatorial practice. He conceptualizes this notion as 'exhibition as medium', while also sometimes commissioning pieces by artist-craftspeople however authoring the exhibition as a whole.