I enjoy watching these short interviews with homeless people. I don't really know why. I have some sort of fascination with how they live. I wish I could be homeless but I cant because I'm too old now and i have to get my eyelids fixed.
Several years ago I worked for a project by a conceptual artist (I provided technical help and filmed the whole thing for a museum) which was simply an office where people could ask for a loan. He had printed bills, but instead of amounts of money, they had amounts of
time.
So there were 1 minute bills. 10 minute bills. 1 hour bills. 1 month bills. 1 year bills.
The idea was that people could ask for any amount of time they wanted and they received their time-bills... and then they had to explain to the camera what were they going to do with that time. The project was not specially interesting (at least it wasn't interesting for me).... and the typical answers were "I need one month to travel to the Polynesia" or some idiots saying stuff like "I need 24 hours without my wife"... or then a woman would come and ask for 2 hours to spend with Brad Pitt, etc.
It was quite snob actually. It's not really the type of art I like.
And then something weird happened. A homeless kid who was around 15 years old got into the office assuming that they were going to give him something of value. He was a bit disappointed when he was explained that the whole thing was about "time-bills"... but he asked for a "loan" anyway... I still remember what he said and what he asked. He said that he simply needed to hours, so then he had to explain what he was going to do with those 2 hours and he said: "I would like to sleep for 2 hours in peace, without being afraid that someone may come and harm me".
Considering that the context was VERY snob, the whole thing got surrounded by a feeling that was somehow similar to Poe's Masque of the Red Death. I still remember such thing.