Curating Contemporary Art (MA)
Haseeb Ullah Zafar
Empathy Loading is a transdisciplinary online art project inquiring into affective relationships between humans and networked non-humans. These emotional connections are the objects of speculation in the works of Friendred, Elisa Giardina Papa, Vishal Kumaraswamy and Marie-Eve Levasseur, who each submitted a creative ‘proposition’ in response to these themes. Calling on artists working with machine sentience and the intricacies of the web, the project incorporates their responses to the potential of empathy, which the curators posit to be a vehicle for taking care of the relationships between humans and networked non-humans. The artworks reflect upon the interweaving of the synthetic and organic worlds, and the emergence of new forms of caretaking and caregiving. Participating artists have confronted machine agency, explored the ethics of invisible labour and some have even embodied what it feels like to don a second skin in an effort to better understand human-machine empathy.
One submission, by Vishal Kumaraswamy, was chosen to be developed further into the project’s main online commission. Through the development of Swaayattate (Autonomy) (2020), an immersive narrative framework split into three distinct chapters, the artist explores the difference between machine and human desire. Following these strands, he arrives at a point where they intertwine and asks what it is really that constitutes sentience itself, focusing on the commonalities between the organic and the mechanical, in effort to dissect the point of contention within their relationship.
Speculating on the potential of alternative systems of care for and with technology, all artists’ responses, exhibited on the Empathy Loading website, invite consideration of meaningful interactions between humans and machines by developing new forms of intimacy. Launched on 15 June 2020, the website also features alongside artworks, a curatorial statement, newly commissioned creative text by poet and programmer Allison Parrish, artist interviews, recording of commissioned artist Vishal Kumaraswamy in conversation with Zarina Muhammad and a list of references invaluable to the curatorial process. Amina Abbas-Nazari’s speculative listening experience ‘Multiphonic Connections’ is available to view here.
Empathy Loading, co-curated by Maria Cynkier, Jiayi Du, Sakhi Gokhale, Eve Miller, Vanessa Wang, Huanzhi Zhang and Haseeb Ullah Zafar from the Royal College of Art MA Curating Contemporary Art, is a part of 2020 Graduate Projects in partnership with Furtherfield. It is being displayed as part of Furtherfield’s 2020 programme Love Machines , which explores how technologies of production and control might be reprogrammed to address the health and wellbeing of humans and machines.
(Credit: Vishal Kumaraswamy, #algofeels, 2020, film still. Image courtesy of the artist)
Haseeb Ullah Zafar is an independent curator, researcher, writer, and artist. He is also an Alumnus of the National College of Art, Lahore from where he graduated with a BFA in 2017, specialising in sculpture. His current interests lie in investigating the intricacies of born-digital artistic practices and the curator’s role within the labyrinthine socio-cultural context of the Internet. His dissertation titled Memes IRL considers the visual art form of this type of electronic cultural currency called Memes that are being displayed with increasing frequency within physical spaces. He does this by unpacking the value structures involved in the commissioning, exhibiting, and collecting of Memes within the art ecosphere.
For his graduate project, Haseeb co-curated a transdisciplinary online art commission in partnership with Furtherfield titled Empathy Loading. Inspired by the writings of science fiction icons like Philip K. Dick, Octavia E. Butler, and Hollywood epics like Her (2013), Empathy Loading inquires into the affective relationships between humans and sentient cybernetic beings, taking into account the potential application of empathy to build meaningful connections between the two.
Alongside focussing on curatorial studies at the RCA, Haseeb proactively sought out opportunities to gain experience in the field. One particular highlight was his role as a curatorial assistant on Father Figure: South Asian Art Through the Eyes of Wahab Jaffer (2019) exhibited at Asia House, London.
Prior to coming to the RCA, Haseeb worked at the Lahore Biennale Foundation in the capacity of a curatorial assistant to the affiliate curator on the segment titled Invitation to Action (2018), which was presented at the historic Mubarak Haveli which sat within the larger curatorial framework of the multi-site Lahore Biennale 01. Additionally, Haseeb also managed other integral positions during his time at the Lahore Biennale Foundation, balancing alongside his curatorial duties the roles and responsibilities of site operations manager, production assistant, and research assistant to name a few as part of the team working on the first Lahore Biennale.
