Radical Empathy Open Call - Winners

Radical Empathy is wendy.network’s second Open Call, through which we wanted to encourage people to strive for understanding the feelings and experiences of others. 

We asked wendy.network’s artists to answer these questions with their artworks: What do you define radical empathy as? Why does the world in 2021 need us to have it?

The three winners of the open call are Katarína Zagorski, 江峰 Jiang Feng, and Michael Jordan.

Katarína Zagorski

is a Slovak artist, whose practice focuses on dance, theatre, and performance art.  As a choreographer, she worked for professional ensembles, schools, short films, and television. 

For the Radical Empathy open call, the artist presented her project “Kilometre Dance at Doma Dobre”, a video inspired by her project, Kilometre Dance, in which she dances a one-kilometer long route in public space, following the path of many homeless people in the area to a shelter. The dancer impersonates a creature without a home, a pilgrim from the unknown, as explained by the artist. The music which accompanies the performance is by Japanese noise music artist KK NULL.

The performance is an act of support for Depaul Slovakia, the largest low-threshold dormitory for homeless people in Central Europe. For some viewers, the performance was perceived as rather absurd, which the artist sees as a reason for more radical empathy in our lives, as we can work to perceive those around us more deeply. 

Feng Jiang 江峰

is a non-gendered, multi-disciplinary artist working across genres in movement/dance, theater, performance art, modeling, film, photography, text, and voice.  

For this open call, the artist presented their work “U.S. (Unwholesome Shelter)「美」國”, a series of photographs in which the US flag is juxtaposed with the naked bodies of different people, different nationalities, sexual orientations, genders, and cultural backgrounds. 

The work wants to capture people’s vulnerabilities and strengths and raises questions about the United States as a dreamland and shelter for all. 

Michael Jordan

is a German artist, who works as an illustrator and graphic printer in Erlangen. Born in 1972, he studied Media Illustration in Hamburg, and afterward Printmaking at the University of Applied Art in Vienna.

The artist answered the Radical Empathy open call with his short comic story “Der Fall Birke” (“The Case of Birch”), in which trees and animals are given their own jurisdiction. 

The work wants to pose some questions on what life for humans would look like if we would have an ecological chamber in addition to the existing chambers of the courts.