Lurie, David

Wodiczko, Krzysztof

English

Public (E-Journal, York University)

74A VEHICLE FOR THE URBAN NOMADSKRZYSZTOF WODICZKO AND DAVID LURIE-In The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of1844, Marx describes the home of thefactory wage labourer as a "return to a cave dwelling...now contaminated with the pestilenceof civilization." If labour power exemplifies the sophisticated development of human needs, itsimultaneously reduces the factory worker to a condition of bestiality - poverty is, for Marx,the "putrefaction of man."Factory labour in the 19th century exists within buildings - the factory and the tenementwhere the labourer returns each night - that have reduced the necessary means of living;"light, air, space, etc. - the simplest animal cleanliness - ceases to be a need for man." Inother words, the worker has no right to a habitat or job nor has he (sic) a right to expect anyminimal conditions of either. He occupies these places "only precariously" as both home andmeans of support can be withdrawn from him at anytime.The contemporary situation, in which unskilled labourers are all but un-needed,signifies a fundamental shift in the situation described by Marx. For many, shelter andother means of subsistence are no longer available through the exchange oflabour. In NewYork City, for instance, while factory labour remains an important segment of the economy,it is subject to a continual erosion. Concurrently, low income housing, which since the 19thcentury has been fairly readily available, is now rapidly disappearing.In Marx's terms, the movement of estrangement has reached its epiphany. The capitalproduced through workers' own power has been deployed in such a way that the workers areno longer needed. A whole segment of the urban population is becoming, in economic terms,entirely superfluous. Now while the city may have removed the traces of the individuals whooriginally lived and worked in its buildings, the physical transformation has failed to removethe poor persons themselves. Homeless and jobless, they have nowhere to go, nowhere, thatis, where they might literally disappear.75wC(:J...Jo~ooz«2 76Nuis~u..o~(j)>-NCl:0.:If, according to Marx, wage labour reduces individuals to the very condition of beasts,what are we to make of those who have even been excised from the work economy: withoutshelter or home, these people remain unrecognized as minimal citizens within civil society,even as they stubbornly refuse to remove themselves from our sight.Borne of the desperate need for food and shelter, a new economy of exchange hasdeveloped within this new community of the homeless. With the passage of the bottle bill inNew York in 1983, the collection and redemption of cans and bottles has now become ameans of subsistence for a growing population of New Yorkers. The activity of redemption isdemanding: the daily collection, sorting and returning of 500 cans and bottles (an extraordi-nary feat for all but the strongest and most fit individuals) yields just $25.The re-cycling activity of the homeless follows from the insight that even if an object hasbeen consigned to the garbage, it does not necessarily mean that its exchange value has beenexhausted. Indeed, many homeless scavengers have extended their redemptive activities toinclude the collection and marketing of almost any type of found object (books, magazines,shoes, trinkets, etc.).The incredible demands of their collection activities combined with the constant peril ofattack and intimidation by the police and other authorities, have compelled homeless personsto adopt a highly mobile, nomadic form of survival. To wit, homeless persons have devel-oped their own highly idiosyncratic types of vehicle - shopping and postal carts have provedto be the most reliable vehicles for modification - with which to transport their personalproperty and collect material for redemption.The Homeless people in New York have today laid a stake in the way that the city isorganised publically. Though locked out of the general wage labour economy, their visibilityand engagement in the everyday life of the city is of obvious political significance: they makea public claim to the right to engage in work and repudiate any attempts to deny theirlegitimate claim to membership of the community of the city.-The goal of the Homeless Vehicle Project is to develop strategies for ameliorating the condi-tions of homeless people. In this way it seeks to play a role in the atmosphere of crisis in thecity, exposing the community's lack of and urgent need for permanent housing. If membersof the urban community have now developed powerful and circuitous ways to avoid having toapprehend the daily lives of the city's homeless residents, then one of the strategies of theHomeless Vehicle Project is confrontation: to bring the plight of the homeless, their everydayexistence, into the everyday lives of the 'non-homeless'. It is only perhaps when the homelessare confrontationally recontexualised within the operational field of the 'recognised' resi-dents and workers of the city, that the cognitive armour which enables us to resist apprehen-sion of the condition of the homeless may be Jlunctured.The vehicle, as it is designed, is a skeleton. During use, collected objects may beattached to its metal frame to change the vehicles's appearance substantially. However, thevehicle is designed to be always recognisable - both by users and viewers - as a mechanism forpersons and one that is appropriate to their everyday activities. Through the use of thismachine, which will be identifiably their own, homeless scavengers will challenge the failureof the urban community at large to recognise their role in the city's network of exchange.Carrying with increased speed and efficiency their scavenged detritus, the homeless willdisplay to the city their conditions of survival openly and confrontationally. No longerrelegated to the world of abused objects, the vehicles' users will claim a right for their workas well as an articulation of that right within the public space.Vehicles will be configurated in a variety of different ways, some in reclining positions,others in travelling or resting positions. Sleeping, cooking, eating and even vending will besome of the essential activities that the vehicle will be used for. By linking together groups ofvehicles in one particular place, the social character of homeless person's survival strategieswill be exemplified. Together, vehicles will create a visible, cohesive community of homelesspersons on the streets of the city. In addition, the linking together of vehicles will provide aline of armoured protection - much like the wagon formations of an earlier generation ofamerican nomads - from the often dangerous encounters with authority and so called 'angrycitizens' .The missile-like form of the prototype illustrated here signifies the aggression implicit inthe activities of homeless scavengers. The movement of the carts through the ever transform-ing city (a site of real estate speculation) with their attendant found materials (no longergarbage but representing a viable exchange value) is the sign of the homeless' refusal to bereduced to mere passive observers.The vehicle was designed through discussions with a group of homeless persons and hasbeen produced and tested in co-operation with its future users. It is not conceived of as asolution to the failure of the government to produce homes for the tens of thousands ofpersons who live and work on the streets of New York. Neither is this prototype likely to beuseful to the majority of homeless individuals in the city. Rather the vehicle attempts toaddress the immediate, specific needs of a particular group of homeless people. One of themost pressing needs for some of them is to confront the city and its 'non-homeless' residentswith the operational strategies that the former employ in order to survive.»i'iiIoren"o:o:J...,Ien77 c:o:J~ZZo;::»o(J)Thefollowing took part in the homeless vehicle project:Francois Alacoque, Janusz Bakowski, Tom Finkelpearl, Jay Johnson,Kyong Park, Jagoda Przybylak, Heidi Schlatter, Rikkit Tirevanija,David Lurie and Leslie Sharpe.wer:::J...Jo~oZ0:o~ 78()is~"-~N(/)~a::0.::The author gratefully acknowledges the financial assistanceof the Canada Council.-----I \t,;'!"i::1RAT'''',", {CUte-TINe, PC'SI7/oN "'0=""'.='""vc"'"'"'-';;VP""'Jl~S" .-P/JIHI(· A,",O'Me.,-At·A"m "l'RANSPcRTIIVc;" TO THESYoR6;; FOR SA~Ton_ET F'os:7ioN ';!:r.';tl~ifi1c~{/';:,/'(T.-/':C,;I /JE,X. vow'" JPiASTIC cvli'TAftV paWNSL££PING, PCSl7fON (NICiHT)MC>'Al.- ti,RIO OVCR TP-Il/VUvcE,"T />q)FSlfcl.'R1Ty rtV)HINt; Lt~H7 INS.,-IIUED.tlkT,4t. NOSE~8ARBF([/eWHIl~ {)OWNWAS..""",;; StEEPiNG.. REST/Ne;., POsITION (O.4Y)Mo-rAL NO$£ OPGiV'T{iJ A..I e-Mf:~4~";'Y 6.nT,'7v.eA<i6 Foie 8,,$1/1 AN>:> 07'-<ER. 118;;>E<-7S AIIIO Toe<..$.) WHeN Op{iN <'fJB"I~F FoR. tYH/N WHItE V>'AJHIIVc;. /J"'D BAliUJ~CVto Klr<+i€N.("fFD &>7T(E.sOB~~,-r5PHOTO: JAGODA PRYZYBYCAK»iiiI(iren."o;u79 :tenc;u~zzoS»o(f)

A Vehicle for the Urban Nomads

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A Vehicle for the Urban Nomads

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