I’m adding a new category to the blog: ’90s. Dedicated to art works from the 80s and 90s. Starting with…

Krzysztof Wodiczko‘s Homeless Vehicles.

The Homeless Vehicle acts as a shock-absorbing mechanism that allows people to live between those homeless, and maybe even be very close to them, but without really recognizing them as people and asking who these people are. There is a significant group of homeless who work day and night collecting bottles and cans in New York (bottle bill).

So Wodiczko thought that the best way to make the situation clear to the non-homeless would be to help the “bottle men” by providing them with a tool which would not be associated with stolen objects, such as shopping carts, but something that would be especially designed for them (and with them). The vehicle can be used both for personal shelter and can/bottle storage. Through the increasing presence and mobility of this object it would become both communication and the transport, articulating the real conditions of work and life and the resistance of this group.

Images: designboom, New Media Art Net and Artnet.