THE FOG RECEDES
Here’s a peek of what was brewing beneath the frost this January at Arteles Creative Center, Finland
ZOEY HART – Empathy Channels
www.zoeyahart.wordpress.com
“Thank you for participating in Empathy Channels. In this space you are the navigator, inscribing your journey through a corporeal environment which promises to stray from familiarity and expectation…
As a hybrid performance piece and drawing collaboration, Empathy Channels has evolved into a creative experiment in response to disability, chronic illness, and the indelible marks left by diagnosis and treatment procedures.
Testing the potential of drawn line to enliven, heal and re-animate the body, Empathy channels invited six of my fellow residents to participate in bodytrace- a performative interaction during which each participant used charcoal paste to trace the natural path of his/her gaze across the marks, scars and other unexpected moments of bodily terrain. By angling the participants’ focus towards compassionate understanding, each bodytrace challenged anticipated bias, voyeuristic authority and recoil from the unexpected.
The documentation of each participant’s visual path became an opportunity to re-animate the body through diverse narrative and new interpretation. After each undocumented performance, the lines were traced and interwoven, illuminating a compassionate account of illness, healing, and rejuvenation.”
Zoey A Hart 