Ahmet Ögüt: A look at a serious game, with art and beyond

Ahmet Ögüt was born in Silvan near Diyarbakır in 1981, second largest city in Southeast Anatolia and most importantly inhabited by Kurds in Turkey .

Ahmet Ögüt lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin. Ahmet ÖGüt invoices and creates concept art , and he uses a large number of different media for this art: video , photography , installation , drawn/painted art and printed products .

Ahmet Ögüt is an artist rather famous in the art world who today occupies 356th place on the international world rankings of art. In 2000, Ögüt was still somewhere in the 5000 + room, in 2005 the steep curve began towards the top ratio. Which became a little flatter for 400 in 2010, but still shows such a clear upward trend that art-speculating Ahmet Ögüt should keep an eye on.

Ahmet Ögüt keep an eye on art than interested in money, because they consider his art to be important and/or because they have already seen enough art of Ahmet Ögüt and know that they are expecting an interesting work of art.

Ahmet Ögüt art frightened and makes you curious, provides food -loving brain cells and disturbs it, amused and pulls the sarcastic club over the amusement back ... The art critics agree (almost, they never exist, that would be the downfall of the profession), the Ahmet Ögüt art very often, which have elements, which have something clearly playful. And that's a good thing, because:

When artists play, art is healthy

Concepted art is the art that develops its works of art from ideas, with the idea as the crucial artistic achievement. If in doubt, it is the idea that remains; Often the artwork can and should be created several times, not necessarily by the artist himself, but from the hand of other people.

Concepted art already has something playful from the logical approach: when the art arises from ideas, there is a large, wide, diverse world of thoughts at the beginning of the development of a work of art. When the artist moves in this world, it is part of the mandatory logical development that the artist's world of thoughts is expanding ... The more confidently he becomes with the world of his ideas, the further, bigger, more colorful, the more exciting, more imaginative, "crazy" art will arise.

Concept art has acquired a concept that goes far beyond art: it is also about exploring what makes people learn new things. More precisely what makes people in the first place to learn to learn their environment.

Evolution has developed an intelligent and effective method of causing reason -talented mammals to turn to their environment in learning. It is called "playing" and is practiced most violently by the species, whose individuals have the most in the pear.

Whether man is one of the species whose individuals have the most in the pear, at least with regard to the currently practiced promotion of cognitive and motor development and social competence by playing: in the field of life, it is hardly played in the field of life, in any case rarely that discovery, curiosity and slight fear of the unknown new volume, whose overcoming promotes learning.

The neurologists have known for a long time how the person (the elephant, the bear, the dog, the hamster, the flea) learn best: through surprising knowledge when playing that should take place physically as active as possible. More complicated, endurance and concentration content about playful mediation in a quiet place, easy movement is beneficial, support through continuous motivation and praise is essential for success.

At school, most of the time takes place the exact opposite: instead of a surprise schedule, instead of moving a fixed place, instead of a quiet place full class, instead of continuous motivation, instead of praise instead of praise according to the demands of the grade 1 as a requirement, so a programmed failure for the majority of the students.

How good that there are artists in free democratic states from whom all the (young) people can learn to use their minds without guidance.

Ahmet Ögüt is at the forefront of the artists who encourage us to think free through their work. Here are a few examples from his multi -layered, sometimes pretty bizarre, often stimulating, but never just a playful work:

The art of Ahmet Ögüt

In 2008, Ögüt in "Across the Slope" a specially prepared Fiat 131 "hang up very much above the ridge" on a specially treated surface.

From 2008 too, the "Perfect Lovers" (see ahmetogut.com )-a two-euro piece and a Turkish lira in a familiar unit and incredible similarity. While Prime Minister Erdoğan (immediately before the EU accession negotiations are admitted), contrary to his official announcement of an increased pace of reform in the course of its struggle against the PKK (Workers' Party Kurdistan), forgetted all in 2004 and the application of the General Prosecutor's office at the ban on Erdoğan AKP is rejected with a tight majority ...

Here Ögüt's model for the perfect lovers from the Cuban concept artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres : “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), 1990.

In 2009, ÖGüt stocked the Turkish pavilion on the 53rd Biennale of Venice . He represented Turkey with the installation "Exploded City" , a model city that he composed of buildings that were damaged or destroyed by terrorist attacks. With the model city, which is so extremely, reliable and safe, adds his utopia to commemorate the numerous people who have died in the attacks: the model of the peaceful coexistence of different people, in one place and around the world. On the artist's homepage there is a 360 ° view of "Exploded City".

In 2010, Ahmet Ögüt builds the “River Crossing Puzzle” , an interactive installation with a bomb defender, a suspicious bag, a soldier, two security dogs, a suicide bomber, his wife in a wheelchair and his daughter.

This bizarre society has to cross a river and has already discovered a small boat. According to instructions on the artwork, the involuntary companions at the crossing at the crossing even more at risk than the last wasted tractor boat:

in the "Het Oog" program of the van Abbemuseum Eindhoven with the installation "Black Diamond" . Het Oog (the eye) is an inner courtyard in the open-air area of ​​the museum, which is made available to artists as part of a kind of artist-in-residence program for 6 months to carry out an art project. Het Oog actually has the shape of an eye and is otherwise just a piece of converted space that can be viewed from the sides by glass panes.

Ahmet Ögüt filled the entire room of the "eye" with 12 tons of coal and buried "a small part from the museum" in the created coal mountains. He had the "small part of the museum" from a wall of the inner exhibition rooms instead of his hanging there a valuable diamond.

With this installation, Ahmet Ögüt wanted to delight an art viewer, who, in this case, should find the “small part” as an active art -seeker and hang back in his place and received the diamonds as a reward. In the video below, you can see how the coal mountains are poured up:

In 2011 Ahmet Ögüt designed an installation with "Stones to Throw" that includes public space and the art viewers in the processes belonging to the artwork. Ögüt provides 10 stones with a kind of comic drawing, the style of which obviously alludes to the graphic symbols on the aircraft fumes of military machines ("Graffitis of annihilation").

9 stones were sent individually to the artist's Turkish home with Fedex, the shipping was recorded by documenting the FedEx bill and a display recording. The last stone remained with the artist, as a deputy of all stones that disappeared into the streets of the artist's hometown in the course of military conflicts.

In 2012 Ögüt “The Castle of Vooruit” floated over the cultural center of the same name in Ghent, Belgian, which had been created after a long discussion from the former Volksheim of the Vooruit Consumer Cooperative.

In 2014, Ahmet Ögüt, with the "Anti-Dieb Monoliths", draws attention to a future-threatening problem with the "Anti-DeBt monolith" to our favorite film "2001: Odyssey in space": In order to form university in the United States, an increasingly absurd debt culture has been developing for years. In which the most unscrupulous lenders win the most and in which the danger is great that the borrower only loses their self -esteem and then (also by the way society deals with the problem).

In this madness, this time no "greedy house builder" (who only wanted to make themselves and their children a safe place to live and need support from the company instead of Häme), but students - who have to take on these loans in order to complete their vocational training. Not only is productive lust for research under the debt mountain, he also transforms students into compliant, immature subject; There is never any dollar.

Ögüt initiated "Day After Debt" , a long-term art project that should draw attention to the increasing debt of students. The Broad MSU (Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University) and the Istanbul art organization Protocinema presented the exhibition with the anti-debst monoliths together, Ahmet Ögüt moved some of the leading contemporary artists: Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Dan Perjovschi, Martha Rosler, Superflex and Superflex Krzysztof Wodiczko created sculptures that illustrate the crisis and pressure on the students in a very imaginative style.

Sculptures stood in every space of the Broad Art Museum that serve as collection points for public contributions from the "Dept Collective". "The Debt Collective" is an initiative to abolish student debt, which was created by the "Strike Debt!" Movement and its descendant "Rolling Jubilee" ( Debtcollective.org , Strikedeb.org , Rollingjubilee.org ). The "Day After Debt" continues, see Createlondon.org/event/day-After- .

In 2015, Ögüt will take the motto of the "La Vie Moderne" of the 13th Lyon Art Biennale with the installation "Workers Taking Over The Factory" in a feather-light base. A typical ÖWUT work: complex social problems are tackled with a fine humor, which is more likely to remove the meaning of the topic than masked.

In the case of the Biennale in Lyon with a double reference to the local history: the invention of the cinema by the brothers Lumière and the famous textile industry from Lyon, which, in addition to wonderful silk in 1831 and 1834, had created two large revolts of the silk woven, which was slave with hundreds of fatalities.

These two topics already met in the history of contemporary art: "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon" was the first cinema film of history and was shot in Lyon in 1895. See also the article "Harun Farocki: The ultimately triumphal climb of the sharp look" , in which (also) it is (also) made about Harun Farockis in 1995 that the first film of history is: "Workers leave the factory" .

The 120th anniversary of the first film shoot in history was celebrated exactly where the camera of the Lumière brothers had once stood, because today the Lumière Institute is located.

On March 19, 2015, three thousand citizens of the region played the factory -declining workers from that time; Ahmet Ögüt spoke to some of them in the run-up to the event and equipped their costumes with logos of companies that had been driven into bankruptcy, several from the Rhône-Alpes region around Lyon.

Ahmet Ögüt's way to art

Ahmet Ögüt studied art:

• From 1999 to 2003 at the Painting Department of the Fine Art Faculty of the Hacetteep University in Ankara, which he left with the BA (Bachelor of Arts).
• From 2003 to 2006 he studied at the Art and Design Faculty of the MA, Yildiz Teknik University in Istanbul, graduation MFA (Master of Fine Arts).
• In 2007 and 2008, ÖGüt worked as a "guest artist" at the Rijksakademie van Beelding.

Ahmet Ögüt Current: Design the world, not just with art

Ahmet Ögüt's official website can be reached at ahmetogut.com .

The artist with one of the "unfavorable" names of the world for publication on the web has deprived his name in his top level domain of all accents. Probably with a view to global accessibility; Öğüt is written correctly with a Breve and two tremas, diacritical signs with which a large part of the web browser used worldwide cannot do little.

On the website gratifyingly unexcited in the design, you can see, among other things, a good 50 illustrations of Ahmet Ögüt's works of art, with a project description and other material if this is necessary to understand the work of art. Further information - biography, texts, interviews, links, contact - can be quickly called up on the simple structure of the "Main Page" and read very well in your simple presentation.

After reading excursions on the colorful and colorful web appearances of online magazines or online sales platforms that tremble constantly trembling under the force of constant advertising attacks, Ahmet Öhüt's website is real balm for the eyes.

Real balm for the soul can also be reached on the Ahmet Ögüt website, under "Links" it goes to his refugee project "Silent University" , Thesilentiversity.org . Ahmet Ögüt called a fairly brilliant project into the world:

The “Silent University” conveys knowledge of refugees with an academic background. The idea for an autonomous platform for the exchange of knowledge of and for people in the migration process and their fate interested came in 2012 in London. During research, he became aware of the fate of refugees and asylum seekers with an academic background, who could not use their knowledge and skills in the host country and could not exchange ideas with others.

Your university degrees nothing applies at first, during the (long) examination of the legal status will also be decided at some point about the educational status. Until then, the migrants live in a kind of forced silence, which is to be ended by the "Silent University", the "knowledge brought to silence" is activated immediately - for the benefit of everyone involved.

Take a look, a lot is offered.

There are currently courses on

• "Didactics for Learning New Languages" (in Arabic),
• "Types of Networks; Local Area Network and Wide Area Network" (in Russian),
• "Cash Book for Good Accounting" (in French),
• "Consultation Process Before Surgery" (in French),
• "Ten Types of Arabic Calligraphy" (in Arabic)
• "What is health?" (in English)
• "A Comparison of Sharia Laws and the Swedish Political System" (in Arabic)
• "Iraqi Stories from the Heart: A Historical Look at the Ethnic and Social Composition of Iraq" (in Arabic) "
• "The History of Food Preparation Through the Visual Arts" (in Portuguese)
• "Sexually Transmitted Diseases & The History of HIV" (in Spanish)
• "Grounds for Asylum According to the 1951 Convention" (in Kurdish)
• "What Children (in Migrant Families) Need for their Psychosocial Development" (in German)
• "How to Set Up Your Own Business" (in French),
• "The History of Kurdish Literature" (in Kurdish),
• "Failures of Education System in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region" (in Uiguriska), on half a dozen different locations, from academics from over a dozen different countries - here the dream of every real scientist (in the sense of the really knowledge) realizes to gain free access to the knowledge of people all over the world ... even on a tiny scale.

There are also articles to be accessed online such as the "Silent University Intro Film" and articles written by knowledgeable artists about "Asylum Rights Activism" , "Migration & Neoliberism" , "Access to Education for All" , "Performing Silence" , "Seeking Refuge: Two Friends in Conversation" , "Expiriences of Immigration" , "Gaining" Influence through Local Organizing ” , “ Is a World Without Borders Utopian? ” , "It's an Evil World and We Need Strict Rules!" .

And useful apps such as "Bureaucrazy" , an app that Syrian refugees + mentors, should help refugees in Germany to deal with the "ubiquitous German paperwork". The makers have been committed to the flag of having to help Germans to be able to deal with the regular bureaucracy at some point - please, yes, because of the clear view from the outside, perfectly simple help to tame the German official mold.

Silent University provides some more tools and ideas that aim to make a terrible time of fortactation for people full of knowledge more sensible. Participate (visit courses, read the article, download apps ..) can with Silent University who concludes a "loan contract for the exchange of time and skills".

Ahmet Ögüt's art gives us some suggestions for the future, e.g. B. about the meaning of art and the pursuit of peaceful coexistence: Those who create art from ideas can - to put it bluntly - to put it properly. Those who have created art from ideas for a long time and have now built up many connections to other creative people can let it pop much better.

Those who create art for a long time and very successfully have the necessary change to let it pop so sustainably that something that the world is not forgotten so quickly ... The "Silent University" could develop in this direction, the artist and the participating knowing and learners.

We all be desired that even more artists and cultural workers, but also employees and entrepreneurs, children and seniors, arms and rich citizens are committed as much as Ahmet Ögüt, then this may be something with the model of peaceful coexistence á la "Exploded City" ...

Ahmet Ögüt, short short biography

• 1981 Ahmet Ögüt is born in Silvan, Diyarbakir, Tr.
• 1999 - 2003 BA, Hacettepe University, Fine Art Faculty, Painting Department, Ankara, TR
• 2003 - 2006 MA, Yildiz Teknik University, Art and Design Faculty, Istanbul, TR
• 2005 Artist in Residence Iaab, Basel, CH
• 2005 first solo exhibition "Ahmet Ögüt", Mala Galerija + the Museum of Modern Art of Ljubljana, Si
• 2007 - 2008 Artist in Residence Rijksakademie van Beelding Kunsten, Amsterdam, NL
• 2008 Artist in Residence Future Arts Research at Arizona State University, US
• 2008 Fellowship Abn Amro
• 2008 - 2010 Guest Lecturer, Bouwkunde Academie Architecture Academy, NL
• 2009 53rd Venice Biennial, The Pavilion of Turkey, Venice, IT
• 2009 Artist in Residence Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Fr
• 2010 Artist in Residence de Tolhuistuin, Amsterdam, NL
• 2010 Art Prize Europe's future, Museum of Contemporary Art (GFZK) Leipzig, DE
• 2011 Artist in Residence Iaspis, Stockholm, SE
• 2011 de folk crats beefend art prijs 2011, nl
• 2011 - 2013 Guest Teacher at Kuva, Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Scultpure, Helsinki, FI
• 2012 Artist in Residence Delfina Foundation and Tate Modern, London, UK
• 2012 Foundation The Silent University
• 2012 The Special Prize, Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev, UA
• 2013 Artist in Residence Iaspis, Stockholm, SE
• 2013 The Visible Award for the Silent University, Cittadellarte, Fondazione Pistoletto & Fondazione Zegna, IT
• 2014 Visiting Professor at Kuvataideakatemia, Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, FI
• from 2015 mentoring program at kuvataocatemia, Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, fi

If you have become curious - Ahmet Ögüt's art has already been included in some public collections :

• Goetz, Munich, DE Collection
• Frac Nord-Pas de Calais, Dunkerque, Fr
• Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, US
• Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Hesinki, FI
• Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL
• Fondazione Giuliani, Rome, IT
• MSU Broad Art Museum, East Lansing, US
• Vehbi Koç Foundation, Istanbul, TR