Art
In places where begging is prohibited, Dries Verhoeven places begging and singing aluminium replicas of ghetto blasters. He works with a large group of homeless people, temporarily giving their voices back to the street. The work raises questions about the representative function of public space. Do commercial parties and security services mainly have a say in what we allow on the street, or do we also give the uncomfortable, sometimes manipulative or irritating voice of beggars a place? Verhoeven creates installations, performances and public interventions that focus on the role of spectator, moral frictions, collective vulnerability and the mythopoetic dimensions of crises. He destabilises the boundaries between passive observer and active participant.
