Week 4

Victor Murillo

Art and Community

02/08/17

DORIT CIPYS

What tools does the text offer to our work with diverse communities and collaborators? Post your reflection on our class blog.

Dorit Cipys’ text “Performing Empathy: What the Arts Can Offer Conflict Resolution” is a great tool for any designer, artist, and/or performer on how to explain one’s art. Explaining one’s art can be hard. For some it is something they can never do. Some people in the world never have explained their art or talked about their art. Some artists have to pitch projects weekly for different communities and environments. So why is talking about one’s art so important. Dorit Clipys talks about people in the text and how “Differences between people can be incomprehensible. [They fuel] mistrust that can deter us from engagement with people outside of our community. Recognizing and negotiating personal and cultural differences is dependent on developing empathy for oneself and between people… empathy can bridge the differences between us, art is implicitly “mediative.” Some artists use the relational, mediative qualities of their art practice to stimulate their audience to identify with people they typically do not identify with, or more directly to engage them to co-imagine ways to transform their belief and behavior.”

Dorit Cipys is an artist in the engagement non-artist into art. She makes people want to participate in art. The article talks about the situation in which Dorit had to present to lawyers and mediators what art has to offer to them. Dorit’s challenge was make the lawyers and mediators engage in the presentation. Lawyers and Mediators are always seen as by the book individuals so it would not be an easy task. She was lucky to have a room to her disposal with a wide-ranging amount of technology to change the room into adifferent environment. An environment suitable for Dorit to present her presentation and to also have the audience engaged.