WDE Spotlight: Yuri Veerman

Can you tell us more about yourself, your background and your design practice? 

In my practice, I look for symbols, usually simple visual signs that symbolize a large complex story. That’s my favourite material. That could be a flag, a coin, the face of a prince, or the average house price. This material gives me access to ideas that are normally too big to comprehend. No one can tell exactly what kind of country the Netherlands is or how the housing crisis works exactly; those things are too complex and too variable. But you can buy a flag on Marktplaats and cut it; you can analyse and reduce a number. So by starting with something static and concrete, I can reconnect with something abstract and complex. Something small that gives you access to something big.

This way of working originated during my Design studies at the Sandberg Institute. That is when I thought it would be nice to build a machine where you could throw a euro coin into it, which you would then get back in the form of powder in a bottle, a crushed euro coin. Then you will hold a small glass bottle with euro grit in your hands, and you can ask yourself: has value been destroyed or created? And if it’s the first case: where does the value of that destroyed euro go? 

Now I have a practice where my job is to ask such questions.

Your project, All Cops Are is part of the Embassy of Safety during Dutch Design Week. What can you tell us about this project? 

All Cops Are originated during the Social Design Police programme, where officers are linked to artists and designers. You go along on the job with an officer for a while, and the officer also joins you at your job. I was matched up with a youth officer named Lotte Asma in Hengelo. We clicked well, but I found it difficult to respond specifically to our collaboration or her way of working. I didn’t really see anything that I wanted to intervene in. Ultimately, I threw together three main ingredients: youth, police and watching. I wanted to do something with that. We then shot a video in which officers from Hengelo allowed themselves to be profiled by young people. That video has become the prototype for the All Cops Are project.

We shot the next videos in Rotterdam and Arnhem, with different officers profiled by random passers-by. This time it was not only young people doing the profiling but people of all ages. That was a good choice. You’ll find such a wide range of people on the street. It’s a shame to miss out on something because you only focus on young people. 

The title is a reference to the English acronym A.C.A.B. which stands for All Cops Are Bastards. I thought that slogan was a good starting point because it is an anti-slogan, a caricature. By removing the last word, you throw everything open again. Oh, and I completely forgot to explain the crux: we put each cop on the street twice, first in civilian clothes and then in uniform. We then asked the same kind of questions to the first and second group of passers-by: what do you see? Can this person be trusted? Which party do they vote for? Do you recognize something of yourself in this person? We have edited the answers down into one video.

Can you explain how your project relates to the story of this Embassy?

The theme is trust, and I got a lot of trust from the police to make this. Because I cannot make a promise, in the sense that the work is going to propagate this or that, we are going to make a statement against racism, or against profiling, something like that. I don’t want to do that either. This work is basically about how we look at another person, and what concepts exist to build the boxes we put each other in. What I like, in the video, is that you hear and see how the cubicles are built, but you also feel how rickety they are. Often people are just guessing because I present them with a question and they still want to join the game. Then they have to make do with rudimentary concepts like conservative or progressive, open or closed, to be trusted or not. And so you choose and sit someone in your makeshift pigeonhole, and you yourself for that matter, because it determines how you see the other person. In addition, it is special that I was given so much freedom in making. At one point, when I was editing, I looked at the image and thought: wow, the Police are letting my play with their image anyway! And I can make of it what I want. Quite extraordinary for an institution that is all about control.

In many of the projects you do, you seem to grasp complex problems in a seemingly simple way; how important is humour to you?

Humour touches you immediately. Something is either funny, or it’s not. So if your work contains humour, you’ve immediately touched the viewer, which is a huge advantage. Someone might miss that same message without humour, even though it’s just as true. A humorous design also ensures that people share it, pass it on, or write about it. Humour is a lubricant, as are aesthetics. You’re faster to accept something if it’s packaged well.

How do you try to have an impact with your project?

If your work makes an impact, that’s great, but that’s not what I’m working towards when creating. I focus on what I see in front of me, on the screen or on paper. I try to put something there that surprises me, and then I trust it will affect other people too. I’m not very strategic, either. I never make a master plan; I usually work on the work itself until the moment of launch, and then I throw it out into the world at the last minute. If all goes well, the work will find its own way.

Besides, the word impact is a bit of a slippery word. When I look at a project like Putin a Rainbow that I launched in 2013 as a protest against anti-gay legislation in Russia: has it had an impact? Not if you look at the position of gays in Russia. Well, if you look at the extent to which the work has spread: it has produced iconic images, the most famous of which is on a list of extremist materials by the Russian Ministry of Justice. So they are afraid of that image!

What kind of design/project would you like to create in the future and why? 

I always have a double desire: I want to make things that are as concrete as possible and make things that are as abstract as possible. I want to make a visual book that shows in detail what capitalism is and how it works. I also feel like rolling up a very large coloured round ball at Dam Square and then leaving it there.

Can you name another interesting designer who works in a similar way or on similar themes, and why do you consider their work to be so strong?

I bought The Happy Potato from Martijn in ‘t Veld a while ago. It is a children’s book in which we see how a potato from the field ends up on someone’s plate, is then pricked on the fork, and ends up in the stomach. The drawings are clumsy, and everything is drawn with a smiling face. I think it’s a genius book.

If you could choose one person to work with (a scientist, artist, philosopher, biologist, designer, politician, anyone), who would you choose and why?

Many important ideas exist only as something written down. For example, Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is a pill that many people miss because of the form in which the idea is moulded. I would like to work with him to translate the book into something visual. And I don’t mean a graphic novel, but an iconic design that captures its essence. Something people can turn to when it comes to capitalism, a visual argument that puts an end to all the trickle-down myths.

Which company would you like to do a project for or with? And what kind of project would that be?

I would like to work with KLM. Then I would write a short story for them and put one sentence on the belly of each plane. I don’t know what kind of story yet, but seeing those sentences flying through the air would be wonderful.