Fleshing Out the Invisible: Activating Social Empathy Through the Material

Abstract

This article begins with the material - objects that hold stories, reveal histories, and provoke sensibilities. Ordinary Treasures: Objects From Home is a short film that foregrounds these materialities as a form of everyday activism (Chatterton & Pickerill, 2010), tracing how displaced individuals become visible through what they hold dear. In this cinematic work, international protection applicants and refugees craft an evocative narrative around the singular object each brought from home, invoking "thick solidarity" (Liu & Shange, 2018; Maillot et al., 2023). It is the material - small, mundane, yet profoundly resonant - that animates these narratives and disrupts the apparent divide between what is visible and what is not. The film's anonymous participants emerge in fragments: hands in motion, shadows cast, voices layering against a backdrop of an original score that samples their stories. This fragmented presence centres both the material and the relationality at its core, revealing the co‐presence of the visible and the unseen, of the tangible and the unspoken. Motivated by rising anti‐immigrant rhetoric in Ireland (Vieten & Poynting, 2022), the film seeks to cultivate "relationships of discomfort" (Boudreau Morris, 2016), unsettling the frames of ignorance and challenging the boundary work of exclusion. This article aims to examine the materialities evoked by the film, the processes of their cinematic articulation, and their impact on audiences. Anchored in shared imaginings, co‐creation, and a desire to foster social empathy, Ordinary Treasures becomes an uneasy yet vital form of solidarity (Roediger, 2016). It stands as a creative interruption, offering an alternative vision of everyday activism in an Ireland grappling with the rise of populism. In this article, we will trace how these materialities themselves give rise to theoretical frameworks, shaping and reshaping our understanding of their entanglements. These are not static systems but emergent dynamics, unsettling assumptions and holding space for new solidarities to form.