Ongoing collaborative research // video work
with Yel K. Banto
2022
EMPATHY is the result of a collaborative research of Yel K. Banto and Hannah Doepke that started in Athens 2022. The collaboration was driven by the interest in finding a procedure that would allow us to fully see the other, or to be more precise, to fully see the other in relation to one self. Through the experimentation with a semi-transparent mirror foil we managed to merge our bodies into a single one. EMPATHY depicts the deconstruction of our singularities and presents a new hybrid human who has both of our attributes fluidly combined in one body.
Am I my fully authentic me or am I just a reflection and an accumulation of how my environment shapes me? Experience shapes and experience fakes.
By not denying and actively searching for the influence upon each other we found an analogue procedure that allowed us to experience unification which resulted in the video work EMPATHY.
We see a shift of physical borders, a hybrid human, a fluid body, a performance of empathy, a celebration of tenderness, the deconstruction of singularity, loss of control, loss of identity and an irritation of reality for both the artists and the spectators.
The work was presented in a silent video loop projection in the Cantina Social, Athens and the Literature House, Athens in July 2022.
