Empathy Lab (2014-16) was created by Lochlann Jain (Stanford University, Anthropology professor, Visual Artist) and Krista DeNio (Theater Director, Educator) through Stanford University’s Anthropology Department.
This interdisciplinary arts/anthropology lab class was created to introduce hands-on methods from theater arts, to expand our understandings of cultural contact and to develop, generate, and examine 1) expansive thinking about the creative elements and possibilities for ethnographic fieldwork and critical cultural studies, 2) skills and tools for developing vibrant relations with social phenomena, 3) experiments for developing new ways of exploring communications, anthropology as a form of engagement, analysis, interpretation and
communication, 4) ties between anthropology as a performative endeavor and performance studies,
5) the meaning and legitimacy of aesthetic responses to experience.
This video shares highlights from the full film documenting our process.
FILM CREDITS:
Directors: Lochlann Jain, Krista DeNio
Producer, Videographer: Eric Koziol
Editor: Loren Robertson
Artist participants:
Rodrigo Esteva and Mirah Kellc Moriarty,
Co-Founding Directors of DANCE MONKS dancemonks.com
John Patrick Moore
Artistic Associate, Central Works Theater Company
centralworks.org
Christopher White
Founding Artistic Director, Mugwumpin
Mugwumpin.org
Scholar participants:
Blakey Vermuele, English
Harper Kennan, Education
Amanda Wetsel, Anthropology
Justine Beed, Anthropology
John Moran, Anthropology
