Distant Feel
| @ Carnegie Museum of Art Distant Feel presents a new body of work in sculpture, photography, and video that addresses the way that images provoke emotion, especially as they travel virtual and physical distances via the internet. The first solo museum show for the New York-based French artist, Catala also addresses the myriad ways we express feelings, through the very technology that increasingly mediates our daily lives. The artist is developing what he calls “a rebrand” for the sentiment of empathy, conceived in collaboration with New York advertising agency Droga5. This new form of empathy is embodied in both a symbol (E3), and the catchphrase “distant feel,” both of which will be employed in the exhibition and online. According to Catala, “Wars are waged, inequalities increase, the planet is being ravaged; all the while the ecosystem of screens through which we learn of them expands around us. Empathy that is too intense or too raw can become a hindrance rather than a help. Distant Feel is a cool, detached, focused form of empathy.” For the exhibition, he created new sculpture in a living medium, tank-grown coral, in the form of this new symbol for empathy. Catala shares the symbol, with more information, at http://distantfeel.com. “It acknowledges that it’s paradoxically OK to be distant and encourages us to express our empathy in an effective way,” he says. “This project is about encouraging people to affirm their bond and to express it via all means of communication.” I asked an ad agency, Droga5, to think about empathy. Ad agencies know a thing or two about empathy. Why empathy? Because the world needs more of it. It’s 2014 the world is still replete of inane wars, abject inequalities are rampant. Empathy is to know one’s own emotions and to feel with someone, to understand someone else’s feelings. To experience empathy is essential to bond with other people and hopefully prevent wars. Information technology, such as the internet, social medias and smartphones change the way, us, humans communicate with emotions. This is a profound change of habit. Empathy is evolving. It’s a good time to talk about empathy. It’s also a good time to encourage more empathy. For one the media constantly solicits our empathic streak. Here a baby laughing, a kitten falling, a picture of a riot in South Africa. It’s easy to select and shut off behind the screen. Empathy is dangerous, for too much empathy can be harmful. An especially empathic doctor would come to a patient with a distraught face to announce him or her that he or she is gravely ill. A good doctor is empathic, but detached, measured, controlled and would tell his or her patient calmly about the disease. Distant feel is what the ad agency recommended. Distant feel is this detached yet effective empathy. Don’t be afraid to feel for others and the world. |
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