The “OS” stands for either “open source” or “operating system,” and the German term Grabeland means land for digging, particularly land left over from allotments leased to people during World War I and World War II so they could grow food. As with our ongoing project International Airport Montello, we used eBay to purchase land, but this time we purchased a set of allotment gardens in Dewitz, a village north of Berlin. We became the landlords of a 36,000-square-foot plot of land with eight remaining tenants and seven feral lots. After receiving complaints from our tenants about the lack of access to water, we suggested that we dig a well, an idea our tenants rejected. Their complaint provided us with a connection to the land and the people of Dewitz, and over the past several years we have searched for water in different ways. We have used this exploration both as a motif and as a means of turning the local into the global and connecting the plot in Dewitz with land in northeast Nevada. The water of the Atlantic geographically separates Dewitz and Oasis, but the lack of access to water connects the two sites. — eteam discusses OS GRABELAND in ArtForum
