Conversation with Güneş Savaş from Oda Projesi, Istanbul, 2005

Güneş Savaş, a member of the Istanbul-based art collective Oda Projesi, describes their practice as a social and relational approach to art. Founded by three artists, Oda Projesi began not as a formal initiative but through the practical need to rent a space in Galata Şahkulu. This incidental start evolved into a project that engages with the intersections of art and daily life.

From their space, Oda Projesi created a participatory platform where artists acted as mediators. They invited collaborators from various fields—artists, architects, and local residents—to form what they call a “third language,” an evolving mode of communication that transcends social and professional divisions. “Artists have a very safe space when they talk among themselves… But we tried to bring these different people together to create their own third language... We generally think that it is important to produce this ever-changing third language.”

When Oda Projesi lost their physical space to gentrification, they extended their work to new spaces, for example through local radio and a book project for the 2005 Istanbul Biennial. They started a chain of dialog by posing eight questions about daily life to people in their neighborhood, who then passed the questions on to others. This network connected 154 people from varied backgrounds—children, shopkeepers, curators—breaking down social hierarchies and showing that genuine relationships can form without physical proximity.

Savaş emphasizes that their work is not about fixing something missing in society but about creating something new—a shared, experimental space for collective engagement. She links Oda Projesi’s process to the ingenuity of everyday life in Istanbul, especially the phenomenon of gecekondu—claiming land to build housing. “We think that these solutions can relate to art because everyday life is constantly producing solutions to sustain itself… We think that this kind of new spaces that Istanbul is constantly producing within itself has somehow energized our art… the way we think and produce.”

For the 2003 Istanbul Biennial, Oda Projesi constructed a real gecekondu inside the exhibition space to spark conversation about informal settlements. In another project, they invited architects “to design a new neighborhood in the neighborhood,” judged by local residents, whose practical questions forced the architects to rethink their assumptions. “In every project we encourage people to change their roles. Both our own roles and the roles that people use in normal life… It is certain that the newly formed language will cause new things, but we don’t depart from something missing, but aim to create something new.”