Bare Life Living Unit
- minimum for a human existence / workshop /Gent / Vooruit / 04-2005
Wouter Cox
Bare Life
A state of living on the level of surviving, it can be in any way: economical,
political, social, emotional, juridical, spiritual, fysical, mental…
It is the edge, and the fundament for ‘living’: the ability
to develop your own life the way you want according to your own personal
talents and needs.
Bare life is a state of being in witch you cannot function properly because
of :
-economical situation, unable to live according to average
living-standard (poverty)
-ideological, because you don’t agree and see no
point in participation (fe. Squatter, clochard..)
-juridical: that for some reason you are not protected
by our social laws (refugees, ‘strange individual cases’,
artists..)
-social: that for some reasons you are isolated, uncapable
to have contact with equally minded persons.
That your environment has a negative effect on your own personal growth.
(low-class living)
Political: when you feel your opinion is fundamentally different as the
way government rules.
Cultural: unable to express your own culture, or whenever your own background
is of a very low cultural level.
In this workshop I will focus on the economical part of Bare Life.
In our Western society we have the right on a minimum amount of money
to live on.
This is about 600€ a month. If for some reason you are unable to
earn more than this amount, you are stuck in a ‘bare life’
situation. All the money you have is what you need for basic living: shelter,
food, clothing, health, and energy. You are unable to participate in average
daily life, means to live according average welfare standard.
Many people in our Western society live on this minimum: lowclass people, long term unemployed, refugees, people who for some reason fell out of the administrative boat, and often artists..
The criteria are very simple:
Living for a long time on a minimum income of 600€, and for some
specific reason unable to get out of this financial ‘bare life’.
For my proposal I will work out a Bare Life Unit for this last group,
the ‘poor’ artist.