Krzysztof Wodiczko on his Homeless Vehicle Project, 1989

This is an important and calling time for artists, especially for those who work
with communicative media and who work with people.

I commend artists moving against populism and the visual culture that
promotes and perpetuates some oversimplified thinking that politicians
disseminate. Populism plays on the fantasies and nostalgia of dissatisfied
people who feel hopeless, proposing a neo-nationalist focus, and resorting to
simplistic solution concepts in order to mobilize the masses.

Artists should deconstruct politicians language and reveal the lies,

contradictions and absurdities within the programs which populist politicians
are promising. This, as I see, will soon be a norm in the United States, and is
already happening in populist government-run countries across the world. We
know from past experiences that the supposed glorious change and happy
future that charismatic radical right-wing and nationalistic politicians promise
to alienated, misguided masses can lead to catastrophes like war.

Artists are experts at dealing with propaganda. Many of them have been and
are employed in advertising and propaganda projects, both in a commercial
and political context. Therefore, we are also deft at confronting its poisonous
use and forms. This has been the case in the time of Vietnam War, to the
ending of which we in no small measure have contributed. Artists are well
equipped to undo the fantasies that politicians want people to live through,
die in, or die for. We must capitalize on lived experience during the Reagan
and Bush eras, as well as the Occupy movement, and move forward with new
deconstructive, yet critically constructive, proactive projects. We must again
join ranks as activists, designers, media researchers and technologists,
political philosophers, sociologists curators, teachers and others, both older
and younger and of all cultural and social backgrounds. Artist and others from
intellectual, cultural, and pedagogical fronts must work together and, with the
inventive use of newly available media technologies, resist the ridicule of
populist politics while inspiring and assisting people in public communication
of their critical aspirations and demands. We need to culturally equip and arm
people to implore the ending of populist regimes.

The Homeless Vehicle was developed in the context of Reagans time as

president, during a mass defunding of federally funded social programs.
People were thrown in the streets. Halfway houses and S.R.O.s (single room
occupancy hotels) were closed. Suddenly, there were a hundred thousand
homeless people in New York City alone a direct result of the federal
government subsidies cuts.

I arrived in New York from Canada in the 1980s, at the time when Donald
Trump emerged as a real estate tycoon. There was a correlation between the
real estate boom and rapid increase of homelessness. As New York realtors
and businessmen created new urban development projects for wealthy
people, it simultaneously destroyed places and affordable rents for the poor
to live. The Trump Tower was symbolic of and a contributor to this scene.
Thus, the Homeless Vehicle was created as a response. Its design was
manifested through consultation with any homeless bottle and can collectorsrecyclers. A homeless vehicle is a design that should not exist in a world we
uphold as civilized. There should be no need for its design. While
pragmatically responding to the homeless needs, the appearance and
function of the Homeless Vehicle primarily aimed to provoke public attention
on the unacceptability of such needs.

The vehicles utopia was based on the hope that the its very presence and
disturbing function would contribute to the greater public consciousness of
the unacceptable homeless situation, point to the need for real solutions, and
in this way lead to new social programs and actions and render the vehicle
itself obsolete. I called the vehicles design method interrogative design
and its aesthetics scandalizing functionalism.

We might actually face a similar situation quite soon. There has been a
vicious victory of capitalism over democracy, but capitalist thinking and
actions have always challenged democracy. Democracy must in response
challenge capitalism targeting its new emerging populist forms. Now that the
government is in the hands of such capitalists, we might have more need for
these critically interrogative designs that respond to and address social
emergencies, the problematic needs and which should have never been
needed in the first place.