A set of 4 synchronised claw skill tester machines are filled with passports from the 10 richest and 10 poorest countries in the world. The passports are then sorted only according to colours – blue, red, black and green – disregarding their hierarchy. As the machines are synchronised, playing one machine means controlling the claw in all the four machines, increasing the probability, or the improbability of winning a passport.
The discussions generated around the machines when people are playing it are on whether winning a passport from the machine depends on luck, talent, or skills. The same questions of talent, skills and luck are applicable to citizenship: no one can choose which parents to be born from, or which nation-states to be born into, yet the principle of decision of a citizenship is still commonly based on jus sanguinis (Latin: by blood), where citizenship is being determined by having one or both parents with a citizenship of the nation-state or by place of birth/jus soli.
Eeny Meeny Money Moe is a development of Lure (2009), an interactive installation of a claw skill tester machine playable with a gold coin, with trails of small passports delineating the space. In Art Hong Kong 2012, Lure attracted 330 paying players per day ($330 income with only 1 passports won every 10 plays), opening a possibility of a self-supporting machine, and perhaps even a profitmaking one if the passports are made with cheap labour. Another development, The Citizenshop Randomizer (2013), a version with a standalone machine for ease of installation in commercial spaces, is currently still under development to generate donations for charities supporting migrant labour and refugees.
