On Praticing Empathy #3 – Two Questions to Yasmeen Godder
Anna Wagner: “Practicing Empathy #3” is your first solo work in many years. It was created in the summer of 2021, in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Since then, you have performed the piece repeatedly in very different contexts. What does it mean to you to still be showing this piece?
Yasmeen Godder: The piece has continuously changed throughout time also still during covid. Because each time I would have to mention how long it has been since the shutdowns and when I first performed it, it was like a few months ago during the shutdowns and then slowly over time it became "remember the shutdowns". Now I feel like it became more a way of looking back at a crisis in relation to the fact that I'm currently living in a time of crisis here. And what is different is that: when I performed it first in a different context there was a throughline that connected everyone in a way. Since it was a global experience and isolation and loneliness and the fact that we each had to figure out our way of dealing with it was very similar across different places. It felt like I'm actually talking about something that the audience is relating to in their own lives. And now, although I'm mentioning the same situation - I haven't changed the situation, it is a documentary piece - I feel that there is this feeling that since then, things have shifted very differently here in Israel. And the whole world is also concerned with it. So, there is this nuance and tension of what does that mean to be in a crisis now in relation to the crisis that was then? And perhaps even a distance and - I don't want to say voyeurism but - a kind of like looking into a person who is now undergoing another crisis in their country while the outside is watching.
So yeah, it keeps on changing and it keeps on shifting in its undercurrents. Even though in a way the documentary aspect of it is very similar. The reference today is different in relation to this experience.
“Practicing Empathy #3” is the last part of a series of performances in which you and your company explored the possibilities of performance, as an event in which people who are strangers meet. You live and work in Tel Aviv/Jaffa. In the last two years, during which you have faced many challenges, has your view of this meeting place, these possibilities, and empathy in general changed?
I feel that as a human being I still believe in this possibility of people, strangers meeting through dance as a means of connecting people. Alongside that living at these challenging and difficult times I have experienced also the difficulty of trying to use dance or to continue projects as they are. And really having to open a kind of greater, maybe empathic practice to understand further the sensitivities of the time. I believe that "Practicing Empathy" is a project that gave and still gives me many tools to look through and think about what I'm doing. And how I'm doing what I'm doing in terms of my practice, in terms of my company, in terms of the kind of projects I'm taking on. But at the same time, I definitely feel the challenges are greater. I'm trying to figure out how to - I don't know if overcome, because it's not so much about overcoming but - bridge the sense of break that has occurred. Or the distance and complexity of finding a common ground between people. So, it's definitively a challenge right now.
