GET A FUCKING JOB – the truth about begging
published by New Social Art School, 2006
Eva Merz & Bob Steadman
96 pages, soft cover, text / interviews, b/w illustrations, 21×27 cm.
Non-fiction, £12,
*****
This book is not just an art book about begging in Aberdeen. The whole concept of this book is to rebuild society from the ground up, using arts just as a tool.
It has an exceptional, outstanding political and structural basic-democratic social purpose and approach, and uses art as a sparingly sprinkled spice to complement and illustrate the project’s purpose without distracting from it.
Funded by the Scottish Arts Council and supported by the Peacock Visual Art Centre, the editors Eva Merz and Bob Steadman compiled twelve verbatim recorded and printed interviews with the beggars, Big Issue vendors, a project worker from the Cyrenians, the mother of a heroin addict, and a street worker for publication in this book.
Pencil drawings, excerpts of news reports from the Evening Express, and quotes from Patti Smith to Alexander Trocchi are used to give the impression of a truly revolutionary focus by putting the interviews into the social and political context of the Aberdeen news agenda. In the short term the book clearly disrupts the local politicians’ aims to ban begging in public places and it ads to the discourse about the increased privatisation and commercialisation of public places.
In the long term the action-focussed New Art School empathises so much with the people portrayed, that it inevitably exposes the flaws of the social system of neo-liberal Capitalism – the lack of quality council housing, homeless shelters and drugs rehabilitation places make jail an attractive warm place to be.
The book exposes myths and clich’s about beggars by giving a voice to the voiceless.
The perspective throughout the book – from the front to the back cover – is the view of the homeless drug addict begging. The book is as much about initiating understanding of society’s classes towards each other as it is about empowering the lowest caste in Scottish society.