Sa, 27.06.2026
2 pm
Talk
Approx. 60 minutes
conversation pieces_Empathie
The discourse series conversation pieces takes everyday technologies as its starting point and situates them in the context of the swimming pool. Each edition departs from a text that sets the thematic frame and serves as a shared point of reference. Invited guests engage with the topic from artistic, theoretical, or technological perspectives, sharing their thoughts and work in dialogue. Here, where we can drift in the water and the gentle sound of splashing forms a steady background hum, the question which technologies carry us and which pull us under is close at hand.
Susan Sontag's essay Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) questions the widespread assumption that images of suffering and violence automatically generate compassion and motivate political reaction or action. More than twenty years after its publication, the text reads as ahead of its own time, an analysis of a world Sontag herself had not yet known. What does it mean to be empathetic in an age of constant image consumption, and what (media-aesthetic) alternatives are available to us? What can we set against the machinery of empathy without diminishing our political agency? Joining the conversation on the critical potentials and shortcomings of empathy are Alona Karavai and Vanessa Oberin.
The conversation series "conversation pieces" is curated by Anna-Lena Panter as part of the transmediale x Tropez collaboration.
The discussions will be held in German.
Photo: Leo Trotsenko, Servus, video still, 2024, courtesy by the artist
About the curators
transmediale is an annual festival and space for critical reflection on art and technology. The festival brings together transdisciplinary communities and diverse audiences with an interest in digital cultures to develop new perspectives on our technomediated times. The festival takes place annually at the end of January and forms the core of the organisation's programming. Beyond the yearly event, transmediale is a transversal, dynamic platform with a vibrant community and a strong network that enables year-round activities, including publications, studio events, and a residency programme. In 2027, transmediale will celebrate its 40th edition.
Anna-Lena Panter organises, curates, and edits between Berlin and Vienna. Since 2020 she has worked in various roles at transmediale festival in Berlin. Currently she coordinates the festival programme and is responsible for the year-round studio activities as well as transmediale's residency programme. With a background in publishing practices, she organises exhibitions, discourse formats, and gatherings.
About the guests
Alona Karavai is a cultural manager and curator from Ukraine, co-founder of the project space Asortymentna Kimnata in Ivano-Frankivskand the media about art post impreza. She worked in the contemporary art center Izolyatsia while it was based in Donetsk, till she had to flee. Following the forced relocation, she co-founded a few artistic initiatives, among which the School of Contemporary Art fra fra fra dealing with emergency art residencies as well as programs for refugee artists and artists after/during combat experience in Ukraine. She is based in Kyiv and works with the topics of peripheries, absence, as well as vitality and death.
Vanessa Oberin is a scholar of art and media studies working as a lecturer and writer in Berlin. Her research interests span theories of the body, the senses, and affect, media aesthetics, and contemporary art. From 2018 to 2023 she was a research associate in the research college "Sensing: On the Knowledge of Sensitive Media" at the Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies (ZeM) in Potsdam. Since 2024 she has been teaching in the European Media Studies programme at the University of Applied Sciences and University of Potsdam. She is currently completing her doctoral project Kunst des Hineinversetzens: Ambivalenzen einer zeitgenössischen Medienästhetik der Empathie (The Art of Empathetic Projection: Ambivalences of a Contemporary Media Aesthetics of Empathy).
Sa, 27.06.2026
2 pm
Talk
Approx. 60 minutes
conversation pieces_Empathie
The discourse series conversation pieces takes everyday technologies as its starting point and situates them in the context of the swimming pool. Each edition departs from a text that sets the thematic frame and serves as a shared point of reference. Invited guests engage with the topic from artistic, theoretical, or technological perspectives, sharing their thoughts and work in dialogue. Here, where we can drift in the water and the gentle sound of splashing forms a steady background hum, the question which technologies carry us and which pull us under is close at hand.
Susan Sontag's essay Regarding the Pain of Others (2003) questions the widespread assumption that images of suffering and violence automatically generate compassion and motivate political reaction or action. More than twenty years after its publication, the text reads as ahead of its own time, an analysis of a world Sontag herself had not yet known. What does it mean to be empathetic in an age of constant image consumption, and what (media-aesthetic) alternatives are available to us? What can we set against the machinery of empathy without diminishing our political agency? Joining the conversation on the critical potentials and shortcomings of empathy are Alona Karavai and Vanessa Oberin.
The conversation series "conversation pieces" is curated by Anna-Lena Panter as part of the transmediale x Tropez collaboration.
The discussions will be held in German.
Photo: Leo Trotsenko, Servus, video still, 2024, courtesy by the artist
About the curators
transmediale is an annual festival and space for critical reflection on art and technology. The festival brings together transdisciplinary communities and diverse audiences with an interest in digital cultures to develop new perspectives on our technomediated times. The festival takes place annually at the end of January and forms the core of the organisation's programming. Beyond the yearly event, transmediale is a transversal, dynamic platform with a vibrant community and a strong network that enables year-round activities, including publications, studio events, and a residency programme. In 2027, transmediale will celebrate its 40th edition.
Anna-Lena Panter organises, curates, and edits between Berlin and Vienna. Since 2020 she has worked in various roles at transmediale festival in Berlin. Currently she coordinates the festival programme and is responsible for the year-round studio activities as well as transmediale's residency programme. With a background in publishing practices, she organises exhibitions, discourse formats, and gatherings.
About the guests
Alona Karavai is a cultural manager and curator from Ukraine, co-founder of the project space Asortymentna Kimnata in Ivano-Frankivskand the media about art post impreza. She worked in the contemporary art center Izolyatsia while it was based in Donetsk, till she had to flee. Following the forced relocation, she co-founded a few artistic initiatives, among which the School of Contemporary Art fra fra fra dealing with emergency art residencies as well as programs for refugee artists and artists after/during combat experience in Ukraine. She is based in Kyiv and works with the topics of peripheries, absence, as well as vitality and death.
Vanessa Oberin is a scholar of art and media studies working as a lecturer and writer in Berlin. Her research interests span theories of the body, the senses, and affect, media aesthetics, and contemporary art. From 2018 to 2023 she was a research associate in the research college "Sensing: On the Knowledge of Sensitive Media" at the Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies (ZeM) in Potsdam. Since 2024 she has been teaching in the European Media Studies programme at the University of Applied Sciences and University of Potsdam. She is currently completing her doctoral project Kunst des Hineinversetzens: Ambivalenzen einer zeitgenössischen Medienästhetik der Empathie (The Art of Empathetic Projection: Ambivalences of a Contemporary Media Aesthetics of Empathy).
TROPEZ
at Sommerbad Humboldthain
Wiesenstraße 1, 13357 Berlin
Google Maps
Monday – Sunday
10.00 am – 6.00 pm
TROPEZ
at Sommerbad Humboldthain
Wiesenstraße 1, 13357 Berlin
Google Maps
Monday – Sunday
10.00 am – 6.00 pm
