EMPaThY

Robert Wilkins

EMPaThY
Photography / Video

This piece deals with sexual deviance / sadomasochism.  I was particularly disturbed and confused by the the internet videos "One Guy One Cup," and "Three Guys One Hammer," as well as Dennis Cooper's novel "Frisk."  My complete inability to to relate to the motives, experience, perpetrators, and or victims I was confronted with prompted an attempt at understanding via 1st hand experience.

I chose to have the word "EMPATHY" cut into my arm (by someone else - female - in order to support the sexual aspect of the piece) as it was the one thing I felt that stood between me and those I was watching in the videos.  In an attempt to break down that perceived barrier, I deliberately had the "A" and "H" re-cut / crossed-out to create the word "EMPTY."

That "emptiness" being the lack of empathy I imagined sadomasochists and sexual deviants to have; a sort of increasingly-vacuous inability to "feel."  I felt like this is what propelled such people to pursue ever increasing forms of stimulation; departing from the "normally satisfying" stimulation of sexual activity and eventually deviating to a place of total dissolution of "sexual norms," giving way to a new identification where violence becomes ones last sanctuary to experience gratifying (or perhaps, any kind of ) stimulation.

The piece afforded me one solid breakthrough / insight into this subject.  What I found was an interesting nexus between seemingly polar states of blinding ecstasy and excruciating pain.  Both seem to take a person's mind to a dissolution point where thought and feeling fail to serve any further purpose in the face of such overwhelming stimulation, which I found to be both enlightening and excruciating at the same time.