Martijn Engelbregt has been described as a procedural artist. As founder of EGBG – Engelbregt Gegevens Beheer Groep (Engelbregt Data Management Group) – he designs institutes, forms, surveys, and procedures. His absurdist projects offer an ironic perspective on a sometimes Kafkaesque world.

Engelbregt studied graphic design at the Utrecht School of the Arts, graduating cum laude in 1996. During his first year, he began collecting forms, initially because he was intrigued by their graphic appearance. But soon he became even more interested in the question as to why and how people fill in these forms.

“When I began experimenting with forms, my main aim was to post a warning: beware to whom you give information!” he told a newspaper. “But now I too am keen to collect data, although I handle it differently than the outside world.”

Soon after his graduation, Engelbregt made a name for himself by publishing a Counterscript against unsolicited calls from telemarketers. Some years later, EGBG caused commotion by sending out official looking forms to 200.608 households in Amsterdam, asking tenants to register any illegal immigrants they might know. The main aim of the project was to discover how people would react. “It’s art in the form of a research,” says Engelbregt.

In 2002, he established The Service, located in an office in the Dutch Parliament, to research the possibilities of combining art and democracy. The findings were published in the hilarious “Sevice Catalogue - This is the Netherlands.”