POOJA KAGRANA
ILLUSTRATION
INVISIBLE LIFE OF THE HOMELESS
INTRODUCTION
I have been the slowest on work for this project. At the beginning of this project I was really stuck and had no idea what I was wanting to speak about. After reading the brief over and over again I decided to find the story in such a way that would really interest and challenge me to find more about a place.
having the first year based on Norwich I was still keen to know and compare it to the previous city I was living in, London.
I had made my foundation degree project on London and traffic and I really was very amused by the amount of great response of research I could do and facts and experiences I came across during the project. So for this brief I started with some photographs around Norwich that I could say a story to or could tell me a story. I created a series of photographs that were different color as to there meaning. I think it will be really interesting to progress differences between the two cities Norwich and London.
I still was not sure of what I wanted to do with all the information I had collected and I wanted to, or how the photographs would have made me go further from this stage. My first next step was to think and collect some more interesting facts from books and communicating to people around Norwich. I still couldn’t picture my final outcome.
After the holidays I still was at a point where I had only prepared a few collages that where things that were important to me and could have defined me in Norwich at that point of time. The collages where very broad and abstractly created. One of them has all my friends, this collage mostly was to show how people’s presence could define me and how even some small graffiti on the wall or a plant outside the window could define someone.
During the whole process of still identifying and searching for what I exactly am doing for this project, I came across a post on a social media network that made me change my mind completely. The post I found was on a similar to humans of New York a page called Humans of Mumbai that I have been following since a long time now.
The post was about a small boy from roadside asked what he wanted to be when he grows up?, the response by the boy really surprised me-
What do you want to be when you grow up?"
"My only friend in the world is a dog who lives on the pavement near by. So many times at night he comes and sleeps next to me, he protects me from the older bullies and we often share whatever food I get. When I grow up, I want to be him."
the response by the boy made me think how we see them everyday, and almost never extra a second to them, the Homeless. Homeless in India is not new and something that people aren’t aware about. We choose it to go invisible. The men, women and children who eat, sleep and wake up on the roadways, under the bridges and on empty platforms of the railway stations.
Thinking about it how when it starts raining, the idea of the homeless families who are there still on the streets fighting the rains in the nights scares me.
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Talking about homeless in India, it is usually about the the people who come to urban cities looking for work and opportunities, this could be one of the reason on the outskirts or in the regions of some cities?
India is a developing country, it still having a lot of population below the poverty line which makes it difficult and wrong to list down the reasoning for homelessness in India.
India even has a variety of cultures. India has a lot of tribes that have been breaking down recently over the last 10-15 years. In some circumstances, their grandparents could have chosen not to make long-lasting house because they came from nomadic castes. Whereas their parents and grandparents might have chosen to live like that, and the young generation might want to move on. There could be a wide numerous scenario.
One more post that I found was similarly by a little girl who made me go deep into homeless.
"I come here during the evening to sell bubble sticks. I have amazing parents, who encourage me to go to school but I know that they're struggling to make ends meet -- so with the money I make here, I try to buy things for school and contribute to my fees."
"What is your happiest memory?"
"I'm so happy everyday -- I love going to school and studying, I love my parents, I love my job-- who else can say that they're work is to make bubbles and make other children happy? I love everything in my life, so I'm happy also all the time!"
We need only step out of the building to see that the number of people living on the city’s paths, under the flyovers and inside the underpasses which seems to only rise every year.
Where I used to live most of homeless people in the city used to sit and settle under the flyover which was a rough ground filled with stones and dust, scattered with bird feathers, dirt and waste. It used to get really messy and filled with puddle water during the rains but nothing would ever move them.
The traffic near the flyover was loud, noisy horns from all directions would really get annoying to live with, but what would they have done anyway? The air is usually full of dirt and the smell of rot was defiantly not healthy to live in. I sometimes wonder how would they have fight with all the diseases?
Its sad how I myself have made homeless invisible to me. How when someone on the road would ask for money and I would ignore and walk forward, because in a country like India which is highly populated and have no money to provide help in form of shelter to people- there are going to be beggars all around and not that I could have given every other person some help that I would have come across, when I don’t earn for myself yet. In Mumbai, city that never sleeps or the city of dreams as they say, most people have a negative picture of homeless as them being alcoholics and lazy beggars. “The reality to this could be that they have to work very hard to make a living. But the unorganized nature of their jobs, the unlimited pool of cheap labor always is available to replace the homeless to someone better off, the overall view of being unwanted and the constant fear of being evicted, all these leave them with little bargaining power.”
There is a huge no. of babies and young children who face homelessness in India. The kids usually play around and help their mothers beg roadside. I also came across this small conversation of a blogger to a small child.
"Mom has to ask people for money so she can buy us food - she's at the opposite signal right now. We're waiting for her to come back with lunch so in the meanwhile my older sister and I are playing hide and seek - it's my turn to hide!"
The women are patiently waiting for their husbands or family while they themselves try to get some money. The children, who have never seen a word of kind from the outside real world, still smile and live happy with all they know and have. “The homeless are still dreaming of a ration card, a small shelter, a night without fear of molestation and an escape for their children from under the flyovers”
Discussing my ideas with some friends from university we always ended up in deep conversation about the difference between both the worlds, India and U.K. There always came a stereotypical response to them seeing India, how homelessness in India made them so upset and feel bad about the country being so third world.
But homelessness in my mind was everywhere, its just different reasons and proportions to other countries. India being in the top most populated countries in the world and still being developing would have a great percentage of people below the poverty line to make it easily been seen.
I have come across a lot of homeless people when living in London and so in Norwich. Homelessness had different reason and moreover this was about normal people like us unnoticing it in our everyday busy lives.
These conversations with my friends made them really enthusiastic to go out around Norwich and really communicate and understand their ways of living and the stories behind their homelessness and how they where really feeling.
So we started with walking around town and speaking to people who we saw sitting outside some shops with all their stuff packed as if they were going to move very soon from there. One thing that caught me up was that, in my mind when I communicated to homeless people they are very enthusiastic and excited to talk to us, they want to tell us everything but people in Norwich came back out on us as very loud and abusive, that was because one of the top reasons of homelessness in U.K I found out was substantial abuse- drugs or Alcoholism and more. After having a couple shouts from some people there were also those people who were ready to talk, talk for hours, speak about their entire lives. This made us very emotional a lot of times.
I then decided to document these incidents and put them as a part of my research, so rather than writing or drawing I thought it will be better to film the talks or just record the conversations for my further study of homelessness. But the response from the people around Norwich was too strict not to be filmed or recorded either. Rather when I communicated to people in India after this experience people where happy to respond and let me use the camera. so I used to get them fruits or coffee for people in Norwich after them having a conversation as for them to feel comfortable to speak.
questions that I mostly asked were quite wide and broad termed. Also because Holidays were on I usually asked them about their plans for Christmas or their previous Christmas and if they had friends or knew anyone.
At this stage of my project I knew what I where I was going. I was always so thrilled to talk to friends and housemates about my experience around and my view on comparing homelessness in India and how homelessness in U.K felt so scary to me.
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I then further looked down on reasons behind homelessness in U.K. the causes of homelessness are complex. And the current housing crisis have led to a lot of number of people finding themselves without a roof over their heads. The UK is one of the richest countries in the world and still right through the country mini refugee camps are increasingly being set up in a lot of towns and cities. Inside each of those tents is a real person with a story to tell. These homeless camps in compared to India is still a step that can reach to these small number of people but then the question still keeps bothering me on how there are still so many people?
How many camps are there to help these people in the entire country. The answer to this in one of the articles I read gives is “Well, the answer is not a lot. At least, not by those who should be doing something. Of course, there are many charities working hard to provide food, shelter and support to those who need it, but they have limited resources and manpower. The only way to really tackle the problem is for politicians to step up and take action.”
Though this answer didn’t really satisfy me but its still good to find so much writing and articles about homelessness around. Thinking about it so not all of them make in unnotice.
Going further on the research I decided to make a list on the reasons I think are the why people are homeless in India and U.K.
Reasons for homelessness in U.K
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Substantial abuse - (drugs, Alcoholism, etc.)
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Loss of Accommodation with relatives and friends/ not longer willing to accommodate.
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Relationship Breakdowns
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Loss of job
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Jail
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Eviction
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Family problems
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Domestic abuse
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Personal Health
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Mortgage/rent arrests
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Bereavement
How Street Youth Earn Money in U.K:
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Panhandling
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Break and enters
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Selling drugs
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Receive social assistance
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Paid employment
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Sex trade work
Reasons for homelessness in India:
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Poverty
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Domestic and Family violence
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Financial difficulties regarding to business
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Housing crisis
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Inadequate or inappropriate dwellings
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Relationship or family breakdown
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Housing affordability stress
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Natural calamity losing house
By now I knew I wanted to make a film on homelessness and show the invisibility. At first I struggled with how to express this ideology. To create a film comparing the both worlds. I decided to to film some instances and communicate to homeless people on my trip to India before hand in. But I was sure I would be able to film and make my own entire film. So I decided to make a film using the instances that is relevant to my content. As like I mentioned, would be difficult to make this film because my fear of making films, but I was keen and determined. I would just psychologically be abstracting or merging images and videos I have taken in India and on my trip to London. I decided to create a rough by using the experiences I have met before in India while communicating and taking videos, making it just an idea. So I knew that the film itself could be the focused of the message I was wanting to give. The ideology, the idea itself would not be able to communicate so I had to think of something that would let me convey the meaning as thought. After a lot of thought and research, I decided of 'Conceptual Art', where the 'idea or concept is more important than the final product, if such exists'.
I roughly had the aesthetics in mind, as during this project, I was heavily inspired by a music video I came across recently – Up & up by Coldplay. I admired the method of looking at things that we unnoticed. I wanted to exaggerate the idea that when we notice the invisible it comes back so strong like the Music video.
Referring to my initial draft, photographic research and my own personal experience of London and Norwich, I began to finally started to think of a structure and the shape to the film with instances I have shot in India and London a within a series, using all of my materials. I also like I earlier mentioned realized that to show the message I will need similar clips and videos that can help me make the film talk. This process was more the concept of trial and error. Placing sub clips, seeing what worked well visually through composition and what needs editing and what kind of clip is needed to hold the film.
I settled on creating this film as a collection of videos that I personally have shot and some taken to support the content with having a voice over in the film explaining what its about and what I want this film to tell.
ARTIST RESEARCH
NATE KITCH
Is a young illustrator that I follow on social media who really inspires me. I found a connection between his work and the UP & UP music video, that made me look deeper. He Uses a combination of hand-drawn, collage, typography, photography, and digital imagery to create his work, Nate Kitch often incorporates his art work with geometric patterns.
UP & UP – COLDPLAY
My interpretation of this video is that we see some very big things as unimportant or small. An example of where we can see this, is with the elephants in the carpet. The guy is just vacuuming the carpet unaware of the elephant herd crossing the carpet. This is a metaphor for the fact that we do normal things everyday, such as vacuuming, unaware that elephants and many other animals are becoming endangered.
STRUCTURE OF THE FILM
FADING TRANSITIONS
The slow fade transitions were inspired by Walter Murch's work for the opening scene of Apocalypse Now - I really like how a new image is created in the passing from one shot to another - to do this I extended the time of transition.
COLOR SCHEME
I really liked the look of Spike Jonze's digital black and white at for the introduction to the music video "undone" by Weezer - I feel that the distorted high contrast image is confusing and mysterious and this is something that I wanted to create in the film to show the seriousness of the issue.
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FAST CUTS
I came across this video shown by a friend seeing the video for Electric Relaxation by a tribe called quest and found that the fast choppy cuts really give the feeling of being in a fast paced city – which was perfect to show the still homeless person. This the the ideal thing in my film to show how people invisible or ignore other things around.
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DEVELOPMENT OF THE FILM
Experimenting Fast Cuts
FINAL FILM
THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF THE HOMELESS
The soundtrack for the film was made by a friend from Fine Art. The idea for the soundtrack was slow and alarming that could go with the narration and emphasis on the highlights of the film. Sound being an important part to the film took a lot of time to be made. After a lot of trials this soundtrack was finalised for the film.
Narrative Track
(Translation in English)
Homelessness is everywhere around us - in India today it is so common that it goes almost unnoticed. How we see homelessness and deal with it is our wish, we live in such a fast paced world that we tend to ignore those at the bottom of our society. in india we see homelessness everywhere - on the roads, under bridges, but do we do anything about it? Leaving them behind, we often have to move ahead. What must the rest of the world see of India? Poverty and homelessness exists outside of india too. In western culture this issue is ignored, it cannot be blamed on poverty, so what is it? My perception of the UK was dramatically changed after my experience here. Homelessness is everywhere, so how will we make change?