Frances Ho Man Shan
51504889
SM3149 Information, Communication and Contemporary Art
Our participation work is a relational art practise that focus on the human relations and social context. And it's also an reappropriation to the public spaces- MTR stations. This work aims to express the ideas of raising general publican's concern towards the grassroots elderlies who are still working to maintain their living; and encourage the public to pass goods that they don't need to help the others. This work itself and our groups members were working as the mediators; and our targets were the elderlies who collected free newspaper from the MTR passengers every morning; and MTR passengers in the paid area were invited as the performers to pass the newspapers that our group have prepared earlier to the elderlies outside the paid area.
51504889
SM3149 Information, Communication and Contemporary Art
Our participation work is a relational art practise that focus on the human relations and social context. And it's also an reappropriation to the public spaces- MTR stations. This work aims to express the ideas of raising general publican's concern towards the grassroots elderlies who are still working to maintain their living; and encourage the public to pass goods that they don't need to help the others. This work itself and our groups members were working as the mediators; and our targets were the elderlies who collected free newspaper from the MTR passengers every morning; and MTR passengers in the paid area were invited as the performers to pass the newspapers that our group have prepared earlier to the elderlies outside the paid area.
The main reason of targeting those elderlies is due to the fact that a lot of passengers nowadays are tend to ignore those elderlies' need with MTR ltd. discouragement. The MTR ltd. concerns those elderlies' very annoying and a waste of newspaper resources...Many passengers follow the rules of the MTR ltd. without really considering how hard the lives those elderlies are leading and the reasons behind their newspaper collecting activities- to purchase a few more bucks to maintain their basic lives with bags and bags of junk paper. This participation work is also considered as a performace to question the authority of MTR ltd. with passengers.
26/11/2010
It was the first attempt of our participation work and we've tried two different MTR stations- Wong Tai Sin and Lok Fu.
Our group member Frances in green jacket.
Wong Tai Sin is known as one of the MTR station that packed with the elderlies that asking for newspaper everyday. We invited the passengers to pass the newspaper that we have prepared to those elderlies and most of them were willing to. Someone refused to help us since they thought we were close enough to pass the newspapers by ourselves. And we are spotted from the elderlies and they were asking us for newspapers directly.
There were two mains problems that we noticed:
1.) The distance between our group members and the elderlies who were collecting newspaper was not far enough that we were easily spotted.
2.) The passengers just passed the newspaper but they were not seem to know the reasons behind this action.
Our group member Chloe in beige outfits.
And then we tried this work again at Lok Fu at the same morning. This location seemed a better one since there is a long distance between the paid area and the non-paid that those elderlies who were standing...Most of the passengers were willing to participate. The first problem mentioned above is solved but the second one still took us some time to figure out the best solution...We decided to get this work another shot 3 days later at Lok Fu again.
It was the first attempt of our participation work and we've tried two different MTR stations- Wong Tai Sin and Lok Fu.
Our group member Frances in green jacket.
Wong Tai Sin is known as one of the MTR station that packed with the elderlies that asking for newspaper everyday. We invited the passengers to pass the newspaper that we have prepared to those elderlies and most of them were willing to. Someone refused to help us since they thought we were close enough to pass the newspapers by ourselves. And we are spotted from the elderlies and they were asking us for newspapers directly.
There were two mains problems that we noticed:
1.) The distance between our group members and the elderlies who were collecting newspaper was not far enough that we were easily spotted.
2.) The passengers just passed the newspaper but they were not seem to know the reasons behind this action.
Our group member Chloe in beige outfits.
And then we tried this work again at Lok Fu at the same morning. This location seemed a better one since there is a long distance between the paid area and the non-paid that those elderlies who were standing...Most of the passengers were willing to participate. The first problem mentioned above is solved but the second one still took us some time to figure out the best solution...We decided to get this work another shot 3 days later at Lok Fu again.
29/11/2010
Our group members- Chloe and Claire in beige outfits and Frances in green jacket.
Our group members- Chloe and Claire in beige outfits and Frances in green jacket.
In our second attempt, we located in Lok Fu MTR station only and added some memo papers on top of each set of newspaper prepared in order to raise the participants' attention of what they were doing with their self-conscious; and the second problem we experienced last time was solved as well. As you can also see from the video, there were three types of memo papers:
1.) Our group's logo, which is inspired by the gesture of the elderlies carrying heavy newspaper.
2.) Some reminders to tell them how grassroot elderlies are working hard to maintain their basic needs and some facts about their lives such as "1/3 poor grassroots are elderlies." and "Support and respect the elderlies' work to maintain their livings."
3.) Notes reminding the passengers that they were actually a performer in this action i.e. "You are the first/second/third/... perfomer."
With those memo papers on top, the passengers were consciously particpated in this work and be reminded of the situation. The majority of them are willing to participate even though they saw the memo papers on top. And more newspapers were ready in order to have more rounds of this experiment. There are three rounds of our participation work this time,
1.) To begin with, we made thin sets of newspaper in order to explore the passengers' acceptance of this activity.
2.) And the result of first round experiment was pretty smooth and we decided to make thicker sets. Passengers were still willing to help but with a bit confusion and questions towards the size obviously...
3.) There were a thin set and also a very thick set of newspapers for the passengers to choose freely and the passenger chose the thin one...meanwhile the MTR ltd. staff came and stopped us.
The male staff was staring at our activities for a long time and once we passed the newspaper to the passengers he immediate took action. He angrily claimed that it was illegal for us to pass the newspapers to passengers even though the newspapers were belonged to us. He said that he could suit us with the MTR rules and our activity was a commercial activity. We asked which rule we had broke and how he treated our activity as a commercial one but all he repeatedly claiming was he would suit us if we didn't leave immediately. We tried to talk with a gentle tone but he was angrily replied us in a quite rule manner. We found his speech quite ridiculous since he didn't explain his points well and his attitude was poor. Nowadays people are actually concerning "authority" as some points related to laws with loud and mad tone? Black-mail others should have nothing to do with "authority" indeed.
What's more, the size of newspaper sets symbolise the concerns and care of our society. People are willing to offer help only if the situation is a ligher one. They are willing to offer help when they see the newspaper set size is a light one but they started to hesitate once they see the heavier sets. And when it comes to choose freely, people tend to pick a lighter one instead...
Last but not least, we chatted with the elderly that the passengers passed the newspaper to and some more social issues are observed as well. The old lady was being quite nice and friendly during our chat but said that she didn't fight with other elderlies who were also collecting newspapers...But once we gave our extra newspapers to another old lady next to her, she suddenly came and said that we should have given them to her and some bad words were said from her...She didn't stop her words until a female MTR ltd. staff came over. There are a few thoughts in our heads,
1.) The elderlies who are less active are tend to collect less newspapers than the active ones, people should aware of this situation and adjust the numbers of newspapers given to each of them...The self-awareness of general public is important.
2.) The elderlies who are collecting newspapers should be more self-deciplined and stop those fights if they want to continous what they are doing now.
3.) Respect is an essential element in our society. Respect others aviod negative happenings.
So far our group was gaining a lot of first hand social experiences via this participation work and hope to develop this work further as a series of generative performances. And involving more public participants to question about our social issues.
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