All tagged empathy
In October 2020, Monument Lab hosted their annual town hall, “Shaping the Past.” Through conversations between memory works, artists, and interdisciplinary scholars, “Shaping the Past” asked questions surrounding the future of monuments and monumentality, setting the stage for the future(s) of public space, artistic and curatorial activism, and community-building in the wake of 2020.
The author, a performance artist, describes the impetus behind “Optik-Optik Kecil” (Tiny Optics), a participatory artwork of collecting morning dew. The performance was held in an area of land in Depok, a city close to Jakarta in West Java province. It was set at a specific time—weekend mornings during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims fast from dawn to dusk. Participants canvassed the landscape collecting morning dew and, much like the practice of fasting, the performance itself aimed at cultivating people’s empathy. With dew as the materiality of hope and awareness, the artist hoped to make the participants’ realities intersect, even if briefly, within the space of the landscape.
