Discussion: Professor David Cotterrell and Ruwanthie de Chickera present on ‘Empathy and Risk’ 

Professor David Cotterrell, Research Professor of Fine Art at Sheffield Hallam University, and an installation artist working across varied media including video, audio, interactive media, artificial intelligence, device control and hybrid technology. 

At the workshop they presented a lecture on the subject of ‘Empathy and Risk’ arguing that an inflated and false sense of risk allows us to continue to perpetuate both militarism and militaristic thinking to resolve conflict, and to engineer distance in order to generate and sustain the idea of the monstrous other. David and Ruwanthie proposed that this construction of artificial threat benefits particular governmental and commercial super structures, whilst maintaining a besieged group in static victimhood, and ensuring that meaningful empathetic connection is denied to those who might wish to see themselves as engaging in ameliorative intervention.

This line of research and artistic enquiry is influenced by David's experience of conflict representation as a commissioned war artist in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his subsequent decade of practice which presented a constellation of work that problematises the representation of conflict in the mainstream media and cinema, using his multi-discipline art practice to reveal the ‘truths’ of warfare that are obscured in the tropes of conventional reporting and commercial recreation. David and Ruwanthie have collaborated as artists for the past few years, their commitment to examining the human consequences of distance and discordance, and subtly suggesting possibilities of reconnection

The final section of this discussion, sees Ruwanthie and David pose the question about where the artist is most effective in these situations of immense complexity and impasse, with Ruwanthie noting that her reluctance to draw near to power structures had changed over the past few years in Sri Lanka. She relayed that she felt she had appreciably greater impact in talking directly with state decision-makers and political influencers, and acknowledging that the theatre can sometimes function more as a political echo-chamber, rather than the place of genuine encounter and transformation that theatre artists might wish.