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An Empty Table and an Empty Boat: Empathic Encounters with Refugee Experiences in Intermedial Installation Art

An Empty Table and an Empty Boat: Empathic Encounters with Refugee Experiences in Intermedial... Abstract This essay is an inquiry into two intermedial installations that address the experiences of people on the run from war or poverty, yet overtly hinder and problematize the viewer’s identification with the depicted refugees. By doing so, Friday Table (2013) by art collective Foundland, and Isaac Julien’s video installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010) differ from the many contemporary discourses dealing with the so-called refugee crisis that suggest a blind assumption of empathy’s benevolence. Taking theoretical texts concerning the relation between empathy, politics and the (lens-based) representation of refugees by, for instance, Slavoj Zizek (2016) and Jill Bennett (2005) as a starting point, I read Friday Table and Ten Thousand Waves as reflections on the pitfalls as well as the critical political possibilities of empathy in contemporary debates on refugees. Moreover, I argue that the two lens-based installations in question are able to examine the limits of empathy and identification with refugees through their common denominator: intermediality. Both Friday Table and Ten Thousand Waves combine lens-based media (photography, video and film) with non-lens-based medial forms such as drawings, graphs and calligraphy. As I will demonstrate, the interplay between different media is decisive when it comes to the way in which the three works of art produce, manage and reflect on the relation between spectators and depicted refugees. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American, British and Canadian Studies Journal de Gruyter

An Empty Table and an Empty Boat: Empathic Encounters with Refugee Experiences in Intermedial Installation Art

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Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by the
ISSN
1841-964X
eISSN
1841-964X
DOI
10.1515/abcsj-2016-0018
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract This essay is an inquiry into two intermedial installations that address the experiences of people on the run from war or poverty, yet overtly hinder and problematize the viewer’s identification with the depicted refugees. By doing so, Friday Table (2013) by art collective Foundland, and Isaac Julien’s video installation Ten Thousand Waves (2010) differ from the many contemporary discourses dealing with the so-called refugee crisis that suggest a blind assumption of empathy’s benevolence. Taking theoretical texts concerning the relation between empathy, politics and the (lens-based) representation of refugees by, for instance, Slavoj Zizek (2016) and Jill Bennett (2005) as a starting point, I read Friday Table and Ten Thousand Waves as reflections on the pitfalls as well as the critical political possibilities of empathy in contemporary debates on refugees. Moreover, I argue that the two lens-based installations in question are able to examine the limits of empathy and identification with refugees through their common denominator: intermediality. Both Friday Table and Ten Thousand Waves combine lens-based media (photography, video and film) with non-lens-based medial forms such as drawings, graphs and calligraphy. As I will demonstrate, the interplay between different media is decisive when it comes to the way in which the three works of art produce, manage and reflect on the relation between spectators and depicted refugees.

Journal

American, British and Canadian Studies Journal – de Gruyter

Published: Dec 1, 2016

References

  • Life Full of Holes
    Demos
  • Abject Cosmopolitanism : The Politics of Protection in the Antideportation Movement Third
    Nyers