Suffering, Empathy, Art and the Greater Good Published in C Magazine, Issue 85, Spring 2005 Written by: Emily Very Duke, Artist-Educator Art is for empathy, and empathy is for the reduction of suffering. That's the way I've always justified it as my vocation. Otherwise, what's it for? What else does it do for humanity? On the one hand, I feel that the artist has a responsibility to reduce suffering in an abstract, global sense which encompasses all the citizens of the earth—most of whom, obviously, will never actually see the artist's work. This responsibility can be fulfilled only through a kind of ripple-effect: we worry, we make work that reflects that worry, the work flows outward and some humanizing impact is felt. On the other hand, I want to address the artist's responsibility to her or his specific, local public—to her or his audience. I've been teaching art at the university level on and off for the last four years. Every time I meet a new group of students, I ask them to tell me what they think art is for. While I was teaching at a State School in Chicago, the answers I heard were sincere and slightly naive: art was for beauty, art was for the spirit, art was a way for the viewer to escape. This year I'm teaching an advanced level course at a real art school, arguably the best in the country. I was shocked by the maker-centered nature of the students' responses. Art, they told me, was for catharsis. It was for self-expression. Above all, art was for “fun” (the fun being had by the maker, they specified). Not one student said that the function of art had anything to do either with the satisfaction of the viewer or with the greater good. These are highly educated, politically engaged young people (much more so, in fact, than my students in Chicago). They are also thoughtful, generous and compassionate. The problem is that students in art schools, especially at the undergraduate level, are taught the Duchamp paradigm “it's art if you say it is, and saying it's art when it's not artful is in itself a radical act.” They're taught to be suspicious of the beautiful and the interesting, and to follow their quirky whims regardless of the relevance they have to anyone else. They're also taught without ever being explicitly told that as soon as something is art, it's precious. As a result, art education creates artists who believe that they don't have to try very hard to make something of immeasurable value. This is no service to the art world. In fact, I think it's why art is suffering such a crisis of irrelevance the public at large. The work we're producing is just not good enough to catch the eye of the non art- initiated viewer, let alone to hold her attention for long enough to make her care. The best we've managed to do is to incense the public with our Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorexic and our heroic paintings of naked skinheads and our Voices of Fire. The “Fuck-you-if-you-don't-get-it” attitude is really not helping, and neither is the equally popular “It-doesn't-matter-if-it-means-anything-to-you- this-is-about-me.” So as always, the question remains: How can we do it better? We can't just roll over into one of the disciplines at who's interstices we stand. We don't make popular culture (and I don't think it's just because we can't afford to). We don't make philosophy. We don't make public policy. We don't make activism. And we don't “counsel”. We make art, for a huge array of reasons, ranging from the perverse to the utterly banal. I can think of a few things we can do better. For one, we can educate art students to feel empathetic rather than hostile toward the viewer. For another, we can start valuing the explicitly emotional in art as highly as we value the ambiguously clever. And as ludicrous as it may seem, we can advocate for narcissism as a viable road to empathy (and the reduction of suffering) in art. Benny Numerously Ramsay's videos, for instance, are perhaps the most explicitly narcissistic works I have ever seen, and yet those tapes open hearts. The element that joins narcissism and empathy is love, and love is good, always, everywhere. Sometimes I feel like this shift is taking place in the art world. I feel that when I think about Okwui Enwezo being selected to curate Documenta XI, and when I think of the work of artists like Miranda July, William Kentridge, Shirin Nasat, Benny Ramsay, Althea Thauberger, Eija Liisa Ahtila, and so forth. I'm accompanying this essay with an excerpt from the journal my younger brother Peter Duke kept while he was in Sierra Leone, voted the worst country to live in by the UN for the past six or seven years. Peter was there for a year with an NGO called Right to Play, who run Sport in Development programs. Peter organized basketball and Frisbee tournaments for Sierra Leonen children and adolescents. I'm including it in large part because it has been the catalyst for much of my thinking about vocation and social responsibility. I'm also including it because it embodies so much of what I feel is missing in contemporary art discourse. It's unflinching, openly narcissistic, candid to the point of embarrassment, and it's about things that really matter: suffering, empathy, art and the greater good. ***** December 30 2003: Being here is quite crazy. I am a bit sick, a lot needy and working a lot. The UN just said that Sierra Leone is the worst country to live in again. Thanks to SL being so poor I can watch obsolete entertainment technology like VHS and Betamax. But today I found the fried chicken spot in Koidu. The pieces are huge and now that I'm their man they even recook the chicken for me so that it is hottie hotterson. Being white here feels like being rich/famous/beautiful. Everyone wants to be my friend. The smells here take getting used to; thick acrid diesel smoke burnt garbage and spicy BO. Damp still air like a cotton sheet my legs get tangled up in. But I am getting used to things and feeling less like a tag along. I will make it here. April 25 2004: On “vacation” in Capetown. Third night of feverish Malarial chills. I soaked the mattress like a 12 yr old bed wetter again last night. Cape Town makes me feel like Africa has a chance. I wonder what has set SA apart from the mess that a lot of other sub Saharan countries are in. Liberia, Cote d'Ivoire, Congo, Sudan, Angola, Eritrea and Ethiopia—it's so fucking heartbreaking sometimes. But in SA business seems to take place. It's still very segregated but even in the townships conditions had improved since my visit in ‘96. Paved roads, electricity carried through these 30-foot high poles with wire leading away from it like the spokes of an umbrella to all the houses nearby. It's still a crazy rich/poor dichotomy along color lines but compared to Salone it's a breath of fresh air. Only a few beggars and not too persistent. And Dad's friend Devenia told me a story about a woman who was 86 and voting for the first time. April 26 2004: Here I am the next day in the Accra airport waiting to see if my flight is cancelled, wondering if I can reclaim my joints from the hotel room trash can and how I might spend a Sunday in Accra. Maybe I will just watch movies in my dark hotel. I hope housekeeping hasn't arrived on the scene yet. That would be disastrous. Things are getting shady here; someone just took the Ghana airways sign down above the check in counter and literally ran away with it and into a restricted access door. It's not looking good for me getting back to Salone. My writing was just interrupted by the firiest burp I've ever had. Just after swallowing an anti-malarial horse pill without water I belched the dissolved capsule up into my nose, it felt insane. It was like I needed to burp, puke and rinse out my nasal cavity all at once. I would have rather honked up MDMA for an hour straight. May 4 2004: Ghana airways, never again. At least I snuck out of the country with an expired visa sans incident. When I was leaving dude wanted a bribe. Fuck it's easy to get sick of some of the shit in Africa. It rained tonight as we were leaving the UN base after a visit with Sven the Norwegian police officer. At nine a big wind came and people scattered clearing the streets. Then the rain started, not as a mist or a light rain built to a crescendo but like you turned on the tap in the best shower ever. Within minutes the roadside gutters were raging torrents and bamboo walls were toppling over. The egg-sized mangos on the trees were falling like hailstones. Little Samuel, Birgitte's favorite kid, was waiting at the gate in his red tights so we drove him home. He saw our car and waited two hours for us. He is adorable and tragic. The first time we met him he was broken down in tears because his flip-flop was gone. His mom is a double amputee and his father was killed in the war. The landlord kicked them out of their house when they couldn't make rent. He is in school and sells everything and anything afterwards: kerosene, fried dough balls his mom makes, whatever. June 18 2004: Disaster has struck my farming operations. Kitten '2 is dead and three out of five baby chicks have been killed. Due to the ongoing deaths in my compound I have sought the council of the local JuJu woman. After she laughed at me for a good five minutes she gave me some medicine that I am supposed to put into the birds' drinking water. I'm to put a couple drops of it into my cat's mouth. The pair of ducks have proved heartier. Perhaps two is the magic number. You have someone to look out for you. August 12 2004: All the work I have ever done since I was 20 has been to get to know peoples' secrets. To put myself in a position to have them tell, counselor, trusted adult-guy, mentor. Not to take advantage of it—I respect their secrets—but there is too much privacy in the world. September 23 2004: I ran over my latest puss who was tentatively named Solomon until his head got crushed under my tire. In my rush to leave I didn't check under the truck where he liked to hide, and then on my way home I saw a cat on the ground and knew right away. Sahr, my guard, had seen the whole thing and said that Solomon had struggled for a minute before giving up his life. Sahr brought me a tiny kitten before the tears had even dried on my face. He is a thoughtful man. I don't think he liked seeing me mist up in front of him. I cried a lot that afternoon, and not just for Solomon. Fuck it is hard sometimes.