5 September, 2022, Feldfünf, Berlin
Care is usually regarded from the perspective of the caregiver as something that is given to or done for another living being. This approach forgets the vital role of the cared-for in maintaining this relationship. With The Right Distance the festival reinforces the idea of care as a relationship between two parties that are equally responsible for staying in relatedness, even though their roles are different. Moving away from the paternalistic approach of care that is based on projections and principles, care as a relational practice depends upon the one-caring as well as the cared-for being in a state of receptivity in which the right distance is constantly actualized.
Radical Empathy Lab (REL) seeks to activate the affective inter-space of relationalities of care. It is a nomadic socio-ecological and experimental lab that challenges the metrics driven notion of the laboratory in that it activates a holistic knowledge production. REL invites to an affective encounter that embraces relational –versus informational– learning, and that in-corpo-rates the sensing body through transdisciplinary holistic advances that are intertwined with the cognitive. Through practices inspired e.g., by Deep Listening, the lab playfully rehearses the reconnection to the sensual and experiential and seeks to activate a critical consciousness towards interconnectedness and what Brazilian theorist Suely Rolnik calls an “active micropolitics”. REL is a post-representational practice. It moves through time and place as a question, a slogan, an intervention, as actions, as affective encounter and as place that allows to explore how to activate a micropolitical and a holistic making and understanding of empathy as “affective translation” (Carolyn Pedwell).All bodies are welcome.
