Abstract
This article explores the concept of empathy as an affirmative feminist engagement with Tracey Emin’s short film Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children (1998). I consider the ‘work’ that art does in terms of empathic possibility asking why the film triggers this response and what this means for empathy research as an extension of the cross-disciplinary turn towards affect. I argue for empathy as the ethical negotiation of differences made possible by the affirmation of ‘what-is’. In particular, I focus on the status of the scream, which retains an ambiguous relation to what Barbara Bolt has called the ‘regime’ of representation (2004) yet remains a crucial aspect of the experience of Emin’s film.
Highlights
In 2008 Tracey Emin’s short film Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children (1998) was exhibited at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh
Homage to Edvard Munch starts with the naked Emin curled up in a foetal position, isolated on a wooden jetty at the edge of the Oslo Fjord, which is the location used in Munch’s 1893 painting The Scream
Resisting the temptation to run to the room in which Homage to Edvard Munch was exhibited, I was relieved to discover the sign value of the scream, its existence as a textual component of the two minute 10 second Super 8 film
Summary
In 2008 Tracey Emin’s short film Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children (1998) was exhibited at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. In this article I want to argue that the affective resonance of Emin’s film is not solely at the level of what is represented (it is not a representation of traumatic events, this is the case), but rather is the occasion for an empathic encounter between artist-as-artwork and viewer-collaborator, which is necessarily affirmative in its co-emergence of the ‘work’ of art. It is to say yes to the experience of another rather than treat it with suspicion, refusing critical models that centre on the veracity of Emin’s work (did the event she speaks of really happen, is her art autobiographically accurate?). This article aims to contribute to the development of this field
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