Radical Empathy
Artist
Diana Khoi Nguyen
Since the 1950s, we have been asked to put ourselves "in someone else's shoes" in order to widen our range of subjective experience and reality, with the hope of appreciation for and understanding of the nuances and diversity of life experiences. But, there are costs, limitations, and consequences (emotional, physical, political/social, and so on) to empathy, particularly when one inhabits the perspective of the enemy, villain, or predator. Perhaps you might take a moment to trace the roots and rise of empathy, and construct an informed, personal approach to it. Perhaps you will be sympathetic rather than empathetic. Or, perhaps you might engage in radical empathy, but safely, that is: putting yourself in the shoes of someone you wouldn't normally want to--but not harming yourself emotionally or psychologically in the process. One safe entrance point of exploration would be to consider the bodies and roles of your younger self, future self, or a familial self.
A poet and multimedia artist, Diana Khoi Nguyen is the author of Ghost Of (2018) which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Root Fractures (2024). Her video work has recently been exhibited at the Miller Institute for Contemporary Art. Nguyen is a Kundiman fellow and member of the Vietnamese artist collective, She Who Has No Master(s). A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and winner of the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, she currently teaches in the Randolph College Low-Residency MFA and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Consider the bodies and roles of your younger self, future self, or a familial self.
Invitation
Browse through a personal or familial archive, specifically, personal items ranging in emotional significance, such as (but not limited to): photographs, journals, scrapbooks, home videos, physical artifacts, and more. What seems to be reaching out to you? Or who/what are you drawn to? Identify one archival item that strongly speaks to you, one you feel you could safely engage in radical empathy.
Scan the item (if it isn't digital), and place it inside a word processor (MS Word, Pages), or application like Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, or a website like Canvas.
Listen to the item and its contents. What does it reveal, what is it hiding? Create some text boxes to begin taking notes of what you hear and what you are thinking about. Please these text boxes over the item, on certain parts of the it, or even around it like a frame.
Take notes on possibilities of radically empathizing with a figure / character related to your item / in your item. For example, you might recreate a photograph in which you adopt the pose and attire of a figure in the inspiring photograph, or you might recreate your own journal entry, or other similar document. Essentially: what new archival item will you make?
Lastly, consider ways to merge, converge, and diverge your piece with the original archival document. This could take the form of: double/multiple exposures, a video poem, multimedia erasure, etc.