Spare some change?

No Protocol

Everyone, especially in bigger cities, has encountered people asking formoney on the street. A beggar. I grew up near Hamburg and in recent years the numbers have visibly exploded. It always affects me and it seems like there is no protocol available that I could follow. I want to be open, approachable, helpful, but at the same time I feel pity and, to be frank, sometimes disgust or even fear. At the same time I want to treat them with dignity, respect and compassion. I feel helpless and overwhelmed.
There is a recurring situation: people who are very willing to give food or something to drink but don't want to give money because they believe it will only be used for drugs and alcohol. But why is that a problem? I cannot actually rescue the person, but if drugs are a way of finding some relief from their struggles, why should I judge them for it? The main challenge of living on the street is not physical survival but maintaining one's mental state. The path that leads to such severe social exclusion while simultaneously being immersed in society day and night is a long and complex one.

Sašo Sedlaček - Beggar Robot (2006)

Based on these observations, I thought of an artificial beggar. I found a project by the Slovenian artist Sašo Sedlaček, the Beggar Robot. It is a robot made from recycled computer parts. The main theme is about the environmental aspect of electronics and the throw-away-culture. But there is another level of social critique because the robot was actually used in different cities. Beggars are increasingly pushed further out and there are no-go areas like malls. But the robot can go there instead. There is also the idea that people are more willing to give money if it is translated through a digital medium and therefore creates a certain distance to the person in need. I imagine this being the case because the mixture of uncomfortable feelings and resulting unease I described in the beginning is not a singular experience to me but very common.

https://sasosedlacek.com/beggar-robot/

How dare you?

I thought of an artificial creature that makes the visitor think about judgement in that context specifically towards people on the streets that consume substances like alcohol or drugs from money you might gave them.

Imagine a small figure, wrapped in blankets, about knee-high, sitting on the floor. Only a minimally designed head and an arm with a hand reaching outside the blanket are visible. This is meant to mimic a clichéd but nonetheless often real depiction of a person experiencing homelessness. The face has only one feature, a mouth. Before you stand two options, you can give either food or a bottle of beer. If you give the creature food, nothing particular happens, the expression remains unchanged. But if you give them beer, you notice a subtle change in the mouth, a hint of a smile appears.
The concept could be expanded to include representations of increasingly strong substances, with the expressions of relief intensifying accordingly but always still subtle. Maybe something like a sigh that’s been added on to the smile.

The main idea is to create a creature that might evoke sympathy through these associations but lacks the element of disgust. I imagine that the person offering food or drugs no longer judges in this scenario because the social hierarchy becomes artificial rather than real. And because the trope of the drug addict only using the money to destroy themselves and not to get something that I expect to be relevant for survival like food, I think this can stand for itself and doesn't need any explanation. People become actively involved as their interactions directly influence the creature's reactions.

I don't want to downplay the dangers of drug abuse, but this seems obvious enough to most people. I want to open the perspective to the other side of the medal. The high or the drunken state was the solution to a problem that could not be answered in another way. I don’t want to open the whole complex discourse around drug addiction and its relationship to homelessness and stigmatization. Rather, I want to recreate a minor everyday interaction that connects to it and encourages sympathetic thinking about these short moments of twisted but positive emotions, moments of relief some people struggle to find otherwise.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse