In the exhibition Creating Empathy, Spektrum presents works investigating the relation of the self with the other person and, more generally, humans with other life forms. In neuroscience, empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share someone else’s feelings by means of a mirroring effect provided by special type of neurons—mirror neurons—in both animals and humans. This reflective state of feeling-the-other as a means of sustaining the nature of the relation between beings is affirmed via the (ongoing) evolutionary success of technology. What if artists created approaches to critically expand this mirroring effect between people by using machines? When do tools and knowledge of technology and science become meaningful enough to catalyze social empathy in new cultural and artistic forms? And could it possible to technologically extend this sense of feeling-the-other to non-human creatures or things?

Among the artists are Michael Ang, Theresa Schubert, Zander Porter and Pedro Marum of XenoEntities Network, Domenico Scjanino, Kyriaki Goni, Jean-Marc Chomaz, and Michela Pelusio. 

Creating Empathy
SPEKTRUM, Bürknerstr. 12, 12047 Berlin 
30 January – 3 February 2019
https://spektrum.community

A cooperation between transmediale and Spektrum. Supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe.