From Empathy to Benevolence
Summary
95
Empathy
Winter 2019
Given the problems we face in the twenty-first century, the capacity to appreciate the feelings and emotions of others would appear to be a potential antidote to excessive individualism and the allure of withdrawing into one’s own identity. But can empathy really change the world? This issue examines empathy in the context of contemporary creation and seeks to determine whether art can contribute to building sensitive bridges between people that are geographically, socially, and culturally distant and whose experiences differ.
Editorial
Feature
With Open Eyes: Affective Translation in Contemporary Art
Opacity Against the Abuses of Empathy
To Empathize is the Question
The Automation of Empathy
Muscular Empathy and Not Knowing in Dara Friedman’s Mother Drum
Victoria Lomasko and the Graphic Language of Empathy
Flat Death Jest: Julia Martin’s Performatist Aesthetics of Empathy
Inside and Outside the System : Artists Against Prisons
ATSA: When Art Reaches Out
Portfolios
Reviews
Current Issue
Water
We now face a global water crisis. Warning signs are flashing everywhere about the increased desertification of the Earth, the industrial pollution of water resources, and the over-exploitation of aquifers. Faced with such a bleak portrait and the fact that environmental and humanitarian challenges are dependent on economic issues and interlinked policies, which are framed by complex laws, the influence of art is relatively modest. Nevertheless, alongside civic actions that we should actively do, artists can give back to water its symbolic and sacred value. Taking a poetical approach to water, the artists and theorists in this issue navigate between aesthetic forms, activist actions, and metaphor-rich analytical thinking. Adopting a resolutely critical perspective, the articles refer to artworks that try to raise awareness about water pollution and climate issues, envisage a restorative justice, and offer new horizons of hope.
Order