Thoughts after Symprovisation on Art & Empathy
Erik Hagoort
On November 5, 2014, I initiated a Symprovisation on Art and Empathy at Sector 2337 in
Chicago. I invited Tricia Van Eck, Kirsten Leenaars, Jason Pallas, and Caroline Picard1 .
During this conversation we improvised on the motif of art and empathy, while we avoided to
ask questions and give answers.
During our conversation in Chicago we spoke about empathy as an act
of imagination: empathy as a faculty that enables us to imagine
ourselves in another person’s situation or point of view. Imagination
was mentioned in one breath with empathy, nearly synonymous with
empathy. What do we actually mean with imagination, with imagining
ourselves in the other person’s situation? Imagination seems either too
self-evident to talk about, or maybe too vague and mysterious to
articulate.
Imagination has the ‘doubtful honor of being the chief theme in
esthetic writings of enthusiastic ignorance’2, philosopher John Dewey
eloquently states in his compilation of lectures Art as Experience
(1934). This opinion didn’t make him dismiss the subject. On the
contrary, he writes about imagination extensively, pages after page,
and with such enthusiasm and in such a baroque style that it dazzles
me. But what he tries to show is, in fact, more down-to-earth.
Dewey emphasizes that imagination doesn’t have anything to do
with the imaginary, or the fanciful. Imagination also shouldn’t be
regarded as a special faculty, he states firmly, which would endow
people in general and artists in particular with mysterious potencies.
Instead, imagination is a necessary part of our everyday life, we are
constantly involved in it. He defines imagination as the conscious
adjustment of a gap: a gap between what we are used to and the
unexpected; a gap between what happened before and what is given
here and now; a gap between our understanding on the basis of past
interactions and the direct interactions that challenge this
understanding.
Adjusting this gap is what imagination does. This is a risky
operation, not a soothing one: ‘For as it assimilates the present to the
past it also brings about some reconstruction of the past.’3 The effect is
that what always seemed most natural, may appear ‘far and strange’4
So there is a measure of adventure, ‘and this adventure is, in its
measure, imagination’5, Dewey says it rather speculatively. If I am
right he wants to say that imagination, although an adventure, still
remains a conscious act, a deliberate way of adjusting, tackling, and
changing the gap. And here artists come in, because they, according to
Dewey, are able to actualize or embody this risky process, by
‘measure of’ concrete forms, practices, objects, paintings,
installations, literature, music.
In our conversation we freely jumped between art and morality, going
back and forth from one to the other. Our understanding of empathy as
an act of imagination somehow diminished the urge to draw a line
between art and morality.
Imagination usually is associated more with art than with morality.
Not so for Danish philosopher Knud Løgstrup. Imagination is at the
centre of morality, he claims in The Ethical Demand (1957) and in a
compilation of essays Beyond the Ethical Demand (2007). In plain,
crystalline language he connects imagination to the so-called Golden
Rule, which he calls ‘the most natural of moral rules’6. The Golden
Rule is very well-known and is often mentioned as a general guideline
for good behaviour. It states that ‘what you would have others do unto
you, you should do unto them’.7 We might think that this Golden Rule
is quite a moderate rule, because at first sight it seems to equal doing
good with returning a favour. The opposite is true, as Løgstrup makes
clear. It is a very radical moral rule, he says, ‘thanks to the element of
imagination it contains, and indeed depends on entirely, for here there
is no mention of reciprocation’.8
Two things are said here. First that this moral rule depends on
imagination. Second, that this imagination is a one-sided affair.
Imagination is the absence of exchange, the absence of reciprocation.
Imagination goes in one direction.
Løgstrup shows that the Golden Rule does not say that since the
other person took care of me I must return the favour and take care of
him or her. It is not about helping the other to flourish because the
other made me flourish, or will make me flourish in the future. On the
contrary, he states, ‘even though the other has done nothing for me, I
am still to do for that person the things he or she is in need of.’9
Because those who need help ‘are quite often the very people who
have not been able to give anything in return, and who may never be
able to do so.’10 The Golden Rule is asymmetrical. Not just in certain
situations, but always, according to Løgstrup. He likes to provoke and
continues: ‘Reciprocation serves no one, politically or otherwise’11.
This asymmetry of the Golden Rule is directly connected with
imagination. The Golden Rule invites me to imagine myself in the
position of someone else (for instance him or her being imprisoned)
and to think about what I would like others to do to me if I were in that
situation (for instance visiting me in prison). The Golden Rule
expresses the irreversibility of one another’s situations and also that
there is no need to reverse them. It is about an imaginative change of
roles, not a change in reality. You don’t need to become the other or to
equal the other. It does not require me to involve myself with the other
person in such a way that the situation of the other person becomes my
own. Because then we would both end up in the same situation.
Imagination confirms that there is a difference and a distance in
position or situation between me and the other person, which I have to
deal with. There is, in Dewey’s words, a gap, a measure of adventure.
Somehow this also limits the possibilities. You can only imagine
what you can imagine. Empathy cannot go beyond what you are able
to imagine yourself. The consequence is that you don’t know if what
you imagine matches with the real need of the other. It might be, that
when you visit the person whom you imagine to be in need of visiting,
this other person says to you: please leave me alone. So there is an
uncertainty, there is a risk. This can lead to frustration but it can also
bring some air. The possibility of a mismatch prevents the imagination
to be measured in terms of failure or accomplishment.
Still, if possible, you can also ask another person directly what they
want you to do unto them. Why bet on imagination? Like yourself,
others are quite well-equipped to communicate in what way they
would like to be approached, or treated. On the other hand, it would be
strange to follow blindly what the other person asks to be done unto
them. Your own way of imagining what could be done, if you were in
that person’s situation, can add to a diversity of approaches that in the
end might be just as helpful or even more effective.
‘Organizing ourselves as artists’ implies that artists repeatedly and
consistently meet. Therefore I would like to touch upon some basic
assumptions of what an encounter is and how it works.
Each encounter is different, so no encounter can be repeated. This
doesn’t mean that each encounter is completely new. A rich repertoire
of encounters is at our disposal. We draw from this repertoire.
Thinking in line with ideas of the philosopher Ilse Bulhof on what she
calls an ‘Ethics of Resuming’12, we resume from the repertoire of
encounters, each in our own way, within given circumstances, from
day to day, again and again. We can refine and contribute in our own
way to the repertoire of attitudes, forms, and practices with which we
meet each other.
Artists have contributed in specific, artistic ways to this repertoire
of encounter, ever since they started to invite others ‘to forge together
a relationship that may itself become the artwork’, as Suzanne Lacy
wrote in 199413. Over the last two decades, myriads of art practices of
encounter have been developed. One of the basic assumptions of
encounter that were explored and cultivated is: reciprocity.
Reciprocity, not just in the meaning of mutuality (do ut des = I give so
that you give back), but in a wider meaning of an economy or chain of
relations (do quia mihi datum est = I give because I was given to), a
circulating reciprocity in the sense of Joseph Beuys’s saying: ‘If I take
care of you, others will take care of me.’14 This embracing idea of
reciprocity has become so important, because it might constitute a
conviviality in which, in the words of curator Michael Brenson, ‘all
participants will be, at once, giver and receiver, producer and
consumer, artist and audience.’15 Encounter is an event in which you
are involved without being its author. Participating in an encounter
means to be at least co-author. In that sense, in the encounter one
becomes giver and receiver, producer and consumer, artist and
audience at once.
In case of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the participants not
only imagine but also consistently ask what their colleagues would
like, and they indeed also listen to that and try it. This produces an
ongoing dialogue. This dialogue does not smother but enhances and
refines the richness of sensibilities, as each of them not only imagines
but also has heard (in words and in play) how the others would like
this or that part to be played. Because of the multiplicity of
‘imaginations’ and of ‘knowings’, something extraordinary can come
up.
Some artistic environments were experienced as safe havens:
environments where you can feel secure to be willing ‘to take a ride’.
This can also be said of educational environments where students and
teachers share responsibility for the training programme. And it can be
said of a book that invites me to follow a character, or of a fellow
musician, a friend, or partner. Still, we came back to the conclusion
that this ‘ride’ of empathy is temporary and conditioned: indeed, a
measure of adventure. Empathy as a willingness to let oneself go, to
defer one’s own judgment, to explore and understand someone else’s
perspective, albeit without having to agree, without having to
sympathize. So, in empathy a certain distance remains. The distance of
imagination, the distance of as it were. Would this as it were mean that
I stay in charge? That I still set the boundaries of an encounter, so I
won’t be at risk? Then what is the encounter worth, if my empathy
already has this built-in condition?
That empathy also has a passive side was mentioned during the
conversation. We approached this passive side with ambiguity.
Empathy would make it possible not only to feel for, but also to go
into the situation of someone else, subsequently being caught up, as it
were, in that person’s situation, undergoing it, passively, as if it were
happening to me.
Dutch philosopher Cornelis Verhoeven writes in his Polemical
Thoughts on Intimacy: “Grammatically spoken, life is less an active
than a passive tense. The verb to suffer is derived from the antique
equivalents, the Latin verb pati and the Greek verb paschein, which
meant: to experience, to become involved in an event without being its
author”.16
Originally, in Antiquity, this passivity had a neutral sense, explains
Verhoeven. To suffer meant: to undergo. The association of passivity
with pain and sorrow probably increased as life become more
identified with activity.
Verhoeven brightly has analysed western culture’s activist nature
and its dim view of passivity. He has tirelessly pointed out that we
often imagine taking on an active role in matters which can in effect
only be experienced passively: intimacy, friendship, conviviality, love,
happiness. According to him, passivity is even the biggest taboo in our
society, making it practically inconceivable that ‘in the relationship
between man and the world, passive observation or, at the very most,
consideration of possible action, could play a far greater role than
active, inciting activity.’17
Passivity is not some kind of tragic exception, but an integral
element of our existence. Passivity doesn’t have a paralyzing effect at
all, it only paralyzes when we think that we define and should define
our lives actively, autonomously. ‘If we rejoice about an activity, we
are used to saying it succeeds, not we’18, Verhoeven finely points out.
Verhoeven: ‘Man does not stand active toward the world, let alone
toward the whole world. For that, he came too late, and he will be
gone too early.’19
There is intimacy in empathy. The other person makes me intimate
with their situation or perspective. This is an intimacy that I cannot
imagine myself actively. I don’t need to. That is a relief. It is, as
Verhoeven writes, ‘to share in an intimacy which occurs in a ‘pathic’,
passive zone of existence in which one does not produce oneself, but
rather finds oneself in a state of dependency.’20
1 About the participants of Symprovisation on Art and Empathy:
Tricia Van Eck founded 6108NORTH in Chicago, which empowers multidisciplinary artists to work together and with
the public to nurture creativity, build community, and enhance Chicago’s quality of life. Previously Van Eck worked 13
years as a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, organizing exhibitions and programs, many of which
experimented with public engagement.
Erik Hagoort's practice combines philosophy of ethics and art practices of encounter. Encounter is subject matter ànd
form of his work, which takes on a variety of conversational practices, writing, curating. He teaches at the Master Fine
Art course of St. Joost Academy of Art and Design in Den Bosch/ Breda, the Netherlands, and works on a doctorate in
the arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Antwerp, Belgium.
Kirsten Leenaars' practice is a hybrid of social practice, video and photo based work, engaging specific people and
communities. Her work oscillates between fiction and documentation, reinterprets personal stories and reimagines
everyday realities through staging, improvisation and play. Leenaars works as Assistant Professor at the Contemporary
Practices department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Jason Pallas is an artist, archivist, curator, and educator primarily concerned with projects at the intersection of the
personal, the popular, and the political. He organizes shows as curator for the City Colleges of Chicago under the name
Pedestrian Project. His other projects include the Teen Creative Agency at MCA Chicago and the Institute for
Encyclopedic Amalgamation. He earned a MFA from the University of Chicago and BA degrees from Rice University.
Caroline Picard is an artist, writer and curator who explores how the human relates to its environment, and what
possibilities might emerge from upturning an anthropocentric world view. Picard’s projects manifest in a variety of
cross-disciplinary mediums including curation, critical essays, painting, administrative practices, works of fiction, and
comics. In 2005, she founded The Green Lantern Press and released over 30 slow-media titles. Together with Devin
King, she leads Sector 2337, an experimental art venue in Logan Square, Chicago.
2 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York, NY: the Berkley Publishing Group, 2005), 278.
3 Ibid., 284.
4 Ibid., 278.
5 Ibid.
6 K.E. Løgstrup, Beyond the Ethical Demand (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 142.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 143.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 See: Ilse Bulhof, Van inhoud naar houding. Een nieuwe visie op filosoferen in een pluralistische cultuur (Kampen:
Kok Agora, 1995).
13 Suzanne Lacy, ed., Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (Seattle, WA: Bay Press, 1994), 20.
14 Louwrien Wijers, notes from lectures by Joseph Beuys on economy, 1970.
15 Michael Brenson, ‘Introduction to “Conversations on Culture”’, in Conversations at the Castle: Changing Audiences
and Contemporary Art, ed. Mary Jane Jacob and Michael Brenson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 31-37 (37).
16 Cornelis Verhoeven, Merg en been. Polemische overwegingen over intimiteit (Baarn: Ambo, 1981), 78. English
translation Erik Hagoort.
17 Ibid., 49.
18 Ibid., 77.
19 Ibid., 49.
20 Ibid., 11.