Boneworks Series, 2019Kathryn Gohmert
(Dimensions vary)
MRI scan, sewn paper collage, wood, coal, ashes, electromagnetic sensor


Boneworks is a series of interactive works constructed from traces of collected pasts: collages of MRI film, paper, and autobiographical text are sewn together and housed with a light.⁣

These works flicker into illumination and fade to off based on electromagnetic interactions of the participant. Acting as a physical memory, each of these works alternate between states of accessibility/inaccessibility, occasionally triggered to sudden illumination in an imitation of our brain’s cognitive meanderings and unpredictability.⁣

Boneworks was installed underground in a bunker in Weimar, Germany in 2019 during the 100 year anniversary of the Bauhaus movement to create the installation TRACES OF BECOMING. The installation signified the darker side of the city’s history (as the subconscious underground) while the positive side of its cultural history was being celebrated consciously above ground.⁣

The installation of these light works in an unlit, underground bunker acted as a physical catalyst by which people transported themselves underground into their own subconscious and experienced each work as an illuminated memory there. ⁣

This series reflects on the topics of memory, the transient nature of reflection and the role intention plays in retaining a conscious place in the present.⁣





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