By Gabrielle Kennedy / 04-12-2008

Four years ago when Ogul Oz turned up in the Master’s programme at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, he had a student visa and an instinctual affiliation for Dutch design.  Trained as a graphic design in Ankara, Turkey, he decided that the conditions in his country were such that he had nothing to lose by heading north to see what he could make of Dutch design, which he describes as “dry, pure and minimal.”

“I like the way the Dutch embrace process,” Oz explains.  “It’s almost like the process itself is as much the design as the final object, and a designer can decide to stop and show a product at any stage of that process and the audience will understand the point.”  

Oz’s first project in the Netherlands was an interactive installation titled “Map of the Economy”.  For it, he set up a booth and asked passersby to draw the route they take from their homes to the supermarket.  “It was like asking a stranger for directions,” he says.  The results were pinned up onto a wall alongside a similar project called “Plan of Culture” where passersby were asked to draw a diagram depicting the route they take from their TV to their refrigerator.

The project’s success stemmed from its participatory nature.  “Usually people just look at in installation,” Oz says.  “But by the end of the day my wall was full of contributions.  It felt like people were confessing their place in the cycle of culture and economy, offering an individual’s perspective on a mass situation.”

During the Equality vs Freedom symposium at Amsterdam’s de Balie, speakers were invited to debate whether equality or freedom is more important. For it, Oz was asked to design something relevant for the space.  In a comment on the motivational force of equalizing our social lives, he presented 55 pillows printed with the words, “Sweet Dreams With your Neighbour’s Car.”

“It created a nice atmosphere,” says Oz.  “The speakers were talking about some hard-core issues and sitting on pillows that told a raw and simple truth about how people really feel.”

One’s class or social situation really only exists in comparison to one's neighbours, and a car is the ultimate metaphor of comparison.  “In Turkey we say the neighbour’s chicken looks like a goose,” he says.  “A car is outside, in the front.  Everyone can see it and think about it and compare it.”

Next for Oz was the Burenwinkel community art project, a mobile bus that traveled around Hollands’s cities.  The bus is stocked with products designed to be purchased as gifts for the neighbours.  Oz designed the corporate identity for the project – the logo and packaging.  “The idea of having a neighbour is stronger than the idea of being one,” Oz says in a multi-layered reference to the notion of community and isolation.

Community, neighbours, a sense of society, interdependence and the associated responsibilities have all evolved into recurring themes throughout Oz’s designs.  “There is such a huge gap between the individual and the mass,” he says, “and I want to explore that more.”

It was wanting to do something more tangible and visible within a public space that led him to his latest controversial project, Text Bridge.

At 4am one morning, Oz turned up at a bridge in the Zeilstraat, Amsterdam.  With the help of some friends, he stenciled words onto the center of the bridge.  When the bridge opened allowing the tallest boats to pass, the queued-up traffic were forced to view and contemplate the message: “If the water reached this level we would not need the bridge.  Drive on maybe we will achieve this.”

As soon as the letters were stenciled on, the police arrived and arrested Oz and his friends. “Luckily we had finished,” he says.  “If we had been half-way through, the message would have been unclear and nobody would have understood.”  The young men spent one night in jail and were ordered to remove the project, which they did albeit not before filming it.

A couple of months later, at a debate about unlicensed art in public spaces, many public officials stated that they don’t mind designers and artists using public space, but that they must first ask permission.  Putting them to the test, Oz applied for permission to re-do his project.  “They actually said yes,” he says.  “So we went back and did it again. The police arrived but this time I had the slip, so they left us alone.”

Ozul Oz’s visa is about to expire.  In order to stay in the Netherlands he must find gainful employment within the next month.

Images from top page: Equality Pillow, Text Bridge, Map of the Economy, Equality Pillows strewn around de Balie, Burenwinkel project.

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