Unflinching hologram installation tells stories of UK’s ‘war on the poor’

Museum of Austerity’s 3D holograms, played by actors, show real people who died after cruel treatment from the disability benefits system. Photograph: Museum of Austerity

It is impossible to look away from the shimmering figures that emerge in what appears at first to be an empty room. And that is the point.

Through a headset donned at the entrance of Museum of Austerity, which opened at the Home theatre in Manchester on Wednesday, holograms of people glow in eerie augmented reality. Approaching them, they feel real and touchable but also ghostly and ephemeral, which they are: they are real people who died when our societal safety net did not catch them.