Milena Moser: what will the next think

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Artist Ana Rivera Rossi imagines how future archaeologists will reconstruct such a camp and prepare it for a museum. As if shown by the example of a time that would go down in history as “barbarian”.

“What will they think of us one day?” she asks.

I walk slowly around the installation, leaning over it, finding details over and over again: a stringless guitar, a rolled-up yoga mat, a broken bicycle. In fact, I never look that closely. I usually walk quickly with my face turned away.

Two boys of primary school age stand on the other side, their noses against the plexiglass. They point their finger at particular details that should seem familiar to them. After all, there is hardly a residential area in San Francisco that has not been affected. Conditions here are even a media problem in Europe. Concerned friends call me: is it true that the city in which I live is a “homeless hell?”

“Oh well.” I’ve been here too long, have I become jaded?

I look at two boys. Now I focus more on them than on the installation. What they think is interesting. What do they think about in everyday life when they pass by these tent cities, when they habitually avoid people lying on the sidewalk, at the bus stop or in front of the entrance. Do you ask your parents why these people are lying there? And what can be done to help them?

Children have a clearer idea, a clearer sense of justice than we do. When I.

I remember as a child trying to understand World War II. It was a theme not only at school but also at home and in the books I was reading at the time. I absolutely could not understand how it could come to this. What happened to the adults then? Why didn’t they do anything? I wouldn’t let that happen! I would defend myself, I would fight, and of course I would hide Anne Frank with me. No problem.

But the older I get, the less sure I am. Although I like to think that I am comparatively compassionate and helpful. But have I ever risked my life for someone else? Or even just my safety or my freedom? I have no. Especially for someone I don’t know.

I pass by the homeless every day. Again and again, I go through phases of helpless activity when I bring groceries, sleeping bags and money and try to connect, mostly in vain. But much more often I look to the side and to the floor. I’m ashamed, I dodge. Not only the affected people, but also my thoughts. My own helplessness. “Never,” I quietly reply to the two boys who didn’t even ask me. “Not once did I have the impulse to pick up someone on the street and take them home.”

Now comes the mother of two. She says it’s time to go, but the boys can’t stop just yet. Our eyes meet and then we shrug helplessly.

Source: Blick