Note: The project proposal has changed vastly. The dissertation still deals with empathic methods and processes, but with a different theoretical approach. It will be displayed when finished, on mid-June 2009.
Last revision: 4 December 2008
Research question:
In my recent professional and academic experience, I’ve engaged in several socially focused projects, both as an artist and designer. This opportunity has made me aware of groups of people that are invisible to the powerful, of situations where bias and discrimination are accepted and reinforced upon, as well as issues that haven’t been assessed as problematic to communities within specific societies.
It is in my interest to assess one specific issue within my practice. This issue has to do with an apparent lack of empathy in power-based, structural and hierarchic relationships, as well as personal, intricate and horizontal relationships as well.
Empathy could be taken into account in the decision-making process, especially among those who hold positions of great power. There shouldn’t be a special category, in a “semi-intangible” world, in any designated power system, or a supranational world, as Toby Miller and George Yúdice would state in their book Política Cultural (Ediciones Gedisa, 2004).
In the verge of the supranational world, an empathic method could be integrated into the artistic production, as a standard tool, as the norm for the completion of projects that are able to show fairer ways to live, and at the same time, using art as a strategy to reinforce its way into a sociopolitical context with vast intensity and meaning, as Miwon Kwon states in his text One Place After Another (MIT Press, 2004)
Would it be possible to communicate an empathic method as a tool for the artistic production, as it would to its didactic resources and the structures assuming power over it? Can individuals and communities benefit from communication of an empathic response that doesn’t rely itself on the solemn course of a crisis? Could an everyday possibility of empathy and compassion coexist in this particular historical moment, where the age of information is slowly depriving us to express any emotions towards others? Can empathy be taught, and can its lifelong confusion with sympathy be overruled?
The context:
I’m interested on showing how the possibility of empathy is implemented in the present historical moment, the post-industrial society (also called “service society”, “information society” or “knowledge society”), where network based subcultures become more real than tangible relationships with communities and groups. Within this context, various scenarios and invisible connections are played out between horizontal and hierarchic relationships.
In a transnational standpoint, we are able to read about a myriad of tragedies and crisis elsewhere without having to empathise, or even sympathise. We are even witnesses of national crisis with the capacity of being oblivious to it. This probably happens when we’re not experiencing the crisis ourselves. Even so, there are resources to “cope” with these crises, like call centers and help lines.
But what about the everyday non-emotional scope of interaction with a world that doesn’t recognise us and we don’t even recognise as our own, as part of us? Why are we failing to recognise the infinite networks that exists within us, that we can take part of?
Methodology:
Taking art as a base framework, and design as a secondary framework, I want to show the possibility of empathy within different structures of relationships, engaging in acts that show how this possibility is implemented in contrasted scenarios of crisis periods (more specific circumstances) and regular periods, on an everyday basis (more general circumstances).
Nicolas Bourriaud explains that “the incredible growth of the world wide web, but also a growing need for bonds and contact, frustrated as this is by an abstract, individualistic society, have prompted artists to explore the field of the inter-human. They are thus inventing models of sociality or modes of communication, drawing, more or less, immateriality on the fluxes that tie us to one another.” Technology as its best can offer a valuable opportunity to understand and empathise with others. This virtual network can be translated into an emotional network similar to an extended family. The idea of the next of kin modulates certain permissions, which allow us to help, and be helped as well.
Victor Papanek talks about the spiritual in design, by stating that if design can ease pain, or can make life easier for some group that has been marginalised by society, or if it will help those who are poor, disenfranchised or suffering, amongst other ways in which design can enter spiritual values, its important to note the benefit of using these and other references in design as a background content on the exploration of empathy.
Documentation of these acts is paramount, in order to create a virtual record, so it can be accessed as educational material to a better understanding of what empathy really is and how an empathic model can be applied onto these acts, creating a dialogue towards the contextual, theoretical and practical aspects of the project.
Time plan:
The theoretical and practical development of the project will be run simultaneously. Several practice-based research projects have been working from the beginning of November, and they will have a continuous process and methods of research.
Resources:
In order to have a successful research and practice, its paramount to have feedback on primary and secondary references relevant to the project. It is important to have feedback on the development of the practice, citing artists, exhibitions, events and specific historical moments as references and schematas.
In terms of equipment, I would need to access equipments such as video cameras, tripods, recorders, microphones, sound systems, mixers. I would need the relevant editing programs for video and sound. For the ongoing projects, I need a mobile phone, printing facilities, laser cut facilities for stencils (used for promotion), and staff.
Bibliography:
Daniel Bell (1976) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting, New York, Basic Books, pp. ix-xxii.
Victor Papanek (1998) Toward the spitirual in design in Beauty is nowhere: ethical issues in art and design, Ed. Richard Roth and Susan King Roth, Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture, Overseas Publishers Association, Amsterdam, pp 37-48.
Toby Miller and George Yúdice, (2004) Política Cultural Ediciones Gedisa
Miwon Kwon (2004) One Place After Another, MIT Press,
Nicolas Bourriaud, (2004) Berlin Letter about Relational Aesthetics in Contemporary Art: from Studio to Situation, Ed. Claire Doherty, Black Dog Publishing, London UK, pp 44-49.
