Recent Attempts at Expansive Empathy

Recent Attempts at Expansive Empathy is a series of exercises that acknowledge our non-human cohabitants. Particular attention is paid to bodies that have been intrinsically altered due to human intervention: e.g. the homogenization of crops and livestock for industrial efficiency and the geologic transformation of the desert southwest through military activity. The resulting objects take various forms, ranging from handwoven textiles to cast concrete to video. By employing abstraction, humor, and Rudolf Laban’s theory of Space Harmony, each gesture provides space to consider improving relations amongst earths many inhabitants.

Cotton, cow, rock: each entity maintains an independent sense of time, yet all have evolved due to their proximity to human civilization. Selective breeding turned multicolored cotton white and altered the physicality of livestock, while military exercises gouged geologic formations that previously rendered the human scale inconsequential.

erika lynne hanson

erika lynne hanson