Julian Hetzel - SPAfrica

On moral and artistic dilemmas

Julian Hetzel and Ntando Cele join forces to explore the boundaries of empathy – the ability to imagine what another person is feeling and experiencing. What if empathy does not remove or change existing power structures, but instead reinforces existing privileges? SPAfrica exposes the problematic workings and hidden racism of empathy.

SPAfrica introduces a two-fold gesture of extracting ‘liquid empathy’. The project builds on the transaction of resources between Europe and Africa – water for tears and tears for water. On the one hand, drinking water from Sub-Saharan Africa is imported to Europe: SPAfrica – the world’s first empathy drink. On the other hand, tears are extracted in the heart of Europe and transported to the water’s origins in Africa. The project combines the exploitation of natural and emotional resources to expose neoliberal strategies in the search for alternative raw materials.

With this new performance, Hetzel and Cele question how immaterial goods such as identity and cultural background play a role in our capitalist society. In the international art world, the cultural background and identity of the makers have become valuable assets. Is trauma the new gold of the arts?