My yellow is your green

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My yellow is your green is a nearly one-hour radio play from 2008, which was realized by Tina Klopp and produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). The experimental character of the radio play grew out of an idea by Tina Klopp to pursue the concept of human empathy by exchanging the living spaces of strangers. The original broadcast took place on November 9, 2008.

Contributors

  • Realization: Tina Klopp
  • Sound and technology: Thorsten Weigelt
  • Music: Ben Sturm
  • Editor: Katharina Agathos
  • Speaker:
    • Hermann Bohlen
    • Georg Cadeggianini
    • Nava Ebrahimi
    • Monika Julie hungry
    • Michael Weins
    • Resa Memarnia

concept

According to a study on the neurobiology of empathy, observing and imitating emotions in the brain evokes similar arousal patterns as one's own actions. It is precisely this finding that follows the basic idea of ​​Tina Klopp's experiment, which is dedicated to the question of whether empathy is possible at all, and if so, whereby she is particularly supported. Six test persons are given a recording device and spend one night in a strange apartment. For this short period of time, they take over the life of the respective person, they sleep in their bed, eat at their table, sometimes even take over their everyday rituals and thus experience their perspective purely from the outside. Can this generate understanding and knowledge of a complete stranger?

When selecting the test subjects, Tina Klopp attached particular importance to the fact that they have a professional affinity for language, that they have the gift of beautiful storytelling, or that they come from a psychological field, namely counseling. Accordingly, the experiment was conceived as a radio play from the start, as, according to Tina Klopp, in contrast to image media, a lot is disclosed here, but nobody is exposed.

implementation

The recordings of the original sounds are presented to the listener as a collage and can be broken down into a chronological order of events: first the route to the address described, then the anonymous handing over of the keys and finally the entry into the new world to be explored. After reproducing the first impressions and meeting friends and partners of the apartment owners, the night, the morning and finally feedback is given in various forms. The radio play reproduces the encounter between two test persons and the stranger, in whose life they were stuck for a short time, another test person reads out their farewell letter and the other side, who had left their accustomed living space for one night, also has their say for the first time .

The music that is used partly adds rhythm to the individual speech fragments or marks a concise point such as the beginning of the radio play or the transition from the original sound to the naming of the title and author, which only takes place after three minutes. At one point, relaxing guitar music is used, which accompanies the conversation between a test person and the girlfriend of the unknown swap partner and thus gets the listener in the mood for the night to come. Elsewhere, too, the recording is colored emotionally by adding a single muffled tone to convey the mood of the night. In an interview, Tina Klopp states that her main concern was to convey the atmosphere of this strange situation abroad and that she was not interested in identifying the individual test subjects as individuals whose voices must be distinguished from one another at any time.

The places where two of the voices overlap, the speaking test person can still be heard softly in the background and then sometimes turned louder again are noticeable, which creates the effect of simultaneity and illustrates a shared experience within the test persons.

interpretation

According to Tina Klopp, she does not know whether empathy is really possible even after the experiment has ended. In their opinion, the puzzle game about what an apartment and certain external factors can say about a person worked well, as the test subjects guessed many things correctly, but the experience that emerges from it is the joy of curiosity about foreigners . The implementation of the idea of ​​letting people slip into another life for one night reveals that interest in a stranger begins where you begin to deal with them and try to empathize with them. The experiment may not have shown how far empathy goes with an unknown person, but how much one can become absorbed in the other person's shell.

Ultimately, however, the title of the radio play calls into question the possibility of empathy, as the same perception is called into question. The statement of the title conveys the view that there may not be any real empathy, but only the yellow, which has the same name on the other, but actually looks green.

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