EMPATHY critically explores the dissident, political, and activist potential of pleasure from the fields of architecture, performance, law, art, and activism.
Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of an/other. It is an emotional and cognitive reaction, ability and some might even say intelligence.
While it’s associated with understanding, sensitivity, awareness, kindness, and generosity, we wanted to look deeper. What is empathy? How is it performed and within which structures? To which bodies do we direct ourselves in the search for empathy? From whom do we expect it? What does it mean to have the capacity for empathetic reactions, and when might it not be a welcome response?
We invited eight contributors to compose an assemblage of thoughts on how empathy is enacted, restricted, supported, expected, performed, defined or denied within architecture and our social patterns.
bias (bodies in architecture and structures)
Issue 1: EMPATHY
Contributors
Alexandrina Hemsley, Carol Stampone, Clio Nicastro, Danja Burchard, Maike Statz, Naomi Credé, ROMA ROMA, Saúl García-López, aka La Saula (La Pocha Nostra), Soft Agency, Staci Bu Shea
Editors: Maike Statz, Danja Burchard, Francesca Scapinello
Design: Vera Gomes
Proofread: Liam Foley
EMPATHY – Event Series
Saturday 1.10.22 14:00
“Architecture of Identity”
A collective manifesto writing workshop hosted virtually by ROMA ROMA and La Saula
“nos pensamos monstras, nos construimos bichas”
Roma Murúa Trincado, an interdisciplinary artist and dissident from Barcelona/Argentina, presents her “Manifesto” followed by a conversation challenging the understanding of the political subject “transvestite” across our diverse cultural backgrounds, while guiding us through her practice engaging with art, gender dissidence and activism in Barcelona.
“Manifesting: Performative writing strategies”.
La Saula will then lead us through the writing workshop
We will use Pocha Nostra’s writing strategies to explore some performative tools to write an artivist collective manifesto. The idea is to re-vindicate the importance of poetry and text based knowledge as a tool to declare new territories of performance and positionality. The intent is to set the bases for a collective manifesto formed by including a diverse set of knowledge, disciplines, ages, genders, and ethnicities. Radical listening in a new community will be our entry point to performative writing and the results will give voice to what is most urgent to a given community.
Saúl García-López, aka La Saula (La Pocha Nostra) is a postnational performance artist, scholar, and artivist. La Saula is a Professor in Performance at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, and co-artistic director of La Pocha Nostra. He is dedicated to exposing, dislocating and challenging assumptions of embodiment, gender, identity and representation within an intercultural and trans-cultural context.
His research interest reaches acting, directing and performance art theory and pedagogy including indigenous approaches from the Americas, the embodiment of gender, ethnicity, national identity, stereotypes and representation indigeneity, post-coloniality and decolonial theory. He has toured around the world with LPN and has co-written with Gómez-Peña, a new pedagogical book La Pocha Nostra: A handbook for the rebel artist in a post-democratic society (Routledge, 2020).Roma Roma
ROMA ROMA is an Argentinian visual artist based in Barcelona. She has taught in different art institutions, and works actively in the social field and with different political organisations as an activist. Body, monstrosity and gender are the main topics of her work, expressed as drawings, editorial design, scenography and art direction. In Barcelona, she currently researches about the lives of transvestites and squats in order to create an archive about the trans resistance in the city.
On Saturday 23.10.22 at 15h
“Spaces of Care”
A Reading and Conversation with Staci Bu Shea.
Over the past years, empathy and care practices have gained not only attention, but are elements demanded by creative, social and political movements. What speculative approaches can we think of in order to envision an environment capable of acknowledging the different needs of different bodies? How can we embed notions of care into the construction of our shared spaces; architectural, political and social?
Together with Staci Bu Shea we warmly invite you to an open conversation about practices of care, of protection and the different strategies these artists developed in order to open up new imaginaries. Staci will share their text ‘Grace’s Hospice From the Near Future’ that will be published in ‘bias issue 1: EMPATHY.
Staci Bu Shea
Staci Bu Shea is curator, writer, caregiver and death companion. Their interest in holistic death care is now influencing their reflections on art and collective care practice both in architectural space, but also within our social constructs. Their long-term, transdisciplinary project Dying Livingly looks at the architecture and communal life of hospice and highlights emergent cultures of end of life care. From 2017 to 2022, they were curator at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Common.
15.11.22 at 19h
at “Tivoli” Det Akademiske Kvarter
EMPATHY: Negotiating Togetherness
Film Screening of How to live in the FRG (1990) by Harun Farocki
in collaboration with the Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin and Bergen Filmklubb
As part of our Empathy Series, we are collaborating with the Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin to screen ‘How to live in the FRG’ by Harun Farocki. The screening is hosted together with Bergen Filmklubb and will be accompanied by an introduction based on Clio Nicastro’s text ‘The Two Way Trajectory of Empathy’ and close with a shared discussion.
‘How to live in the FRG’ by Harun Farocki *FRG stands for the Federal Republic Germany
The author assembles a genre picture of the contemporary FRG with shots of scenes where life is rehearsed, ability/durability is tested. Wherever one looks, people appear as actors playing themselves; they take on roles. A play in the theater of life made up of training courses, fitness tests for things and people. Be it in birth preparation classes for expectant parents or in practice runs for sales talks, on the military training ground or during role-plays for educational purposes. Everywhere the incessant effort to be prepared for the emergency of “reality” can be felt. Harun Farocki Institut, Berlin
