‘Humanising’ Statelessness knowledge that these steps were part of the experiment. The passport officer, played by an activist associated with Empathy and Risk named Deepti from Nepal, explained it to me: We just wanted to show you a glimpse of what it feels like to be a stateless person, knocking relentlessly on the door of the authority. It can take year after year; generation after generation. In Nepal, stateless people face all of this harassment. 87 I felt emotionally distressed listening to her, thinking of the reality of actual stateless persons or groups. I promised myself then that I would dedicate myself to the field of statelessness in my future career endeavours. Finally, she gave me a passport and requested I put the passport in front of the bubble. I went there and saw only 15 passports including my own. I wondered: what was happening? Was it that people were not interested enough? In a discussion with Ralph Ya during a coffee break, I asked him, ‘why were there only 15 passports?’ He laughed and informed me that he had given the initial form to more than 150 participants personally, but most of them got annoyed with the process. I realised this is how the artist wanted people to have the experience of frustration. They could not take three days, so how then do stateless persons go through such experiences year after year? Figure 3: Write your birth certificate and prove that you were born. 88 87 88 Informal conversation with Deepti, activist (Mizanur Rahman, Empathy and Risk 28 June 2019). Mizanur Rahman, Write Your Birth Certificate and Prove That You Were Born (Photo, World Conference on Statelessness and Inclusion, 26–28 June 2019). 289