Rehearsing Empathy

Performance, 2023

Collaboration w/ Zina Bluhm

The performance is an exercise to create connection between two individual positions by revealing experiences for each other. It is a form of reciprocity and getting to know each other by introducing the format of unconditional listening. The aim is to create an alternative way of meeting anew in the present by considering and acknowledging the weights of the past and releasing them visibly for the other in the present.

The collaboration traces biographical experiences and link them together: we experienced something happening in a room at a certain time and triggering chains of emotional reactions in us. This happens beneath the surface and usually as if by itself, not always immediately visible, or only noticeable in a displaced way. In Rehearsing Empathy, the resulting circles will intersect. It is precisely there that a new space is created in which we can meet and exchange ideas with commonalities. We act in all the bodies in which we have already lived in this life: the child, the daughter, as mother, as wife, as friend, as living being.