Ca3(PO4)2 Metempsychosis

Anne Beatrice Baker / Insuk Shin

01_SCENARIO

On the Easternmost limits of the Bronx in New York City is Hart Island, unknown to most New Yorkers. It is home to Potter’S Field, the final resting place to New York’s unclaimed, unknown, homeless, stillborn and indigent. Since 1867, over 850,000 people have been buried here in unmarked mass graves. Hart Island is currently inaccessible to the public except under rare circumstance when a family member hunts down a deceased loved one years later to pay respects or to disinter a grave.

When people die, the living left behind go through a period of change from relating to them as an external reality, to meeting and accepting them as alive in memories and inner life. This is a psychic absorption of an individual through memory, and an important part of the grieving process and the release of the parted soul. The deceased residents of Hart Island, however, were never properly honored after their passing or digested through memory by the living, and therefore cannot fully move on the next life until their souls are released through the attention of the living.

An embassy between the living and the dead is erected from the bones of the deceased, creating a threshold between the dimensions of the life and death. Visitors access the island by boat and pay respects to the forgotten dead and their lost identities. To adopt an unknown person and to provide them with care and affection creates a link between life and death to benefit both worlds, and created a renegotiation with life and death.

The recycling of human bodies is a physical act, but also a metaphysical one. By caressing the remains of lost identity, the visitor may unearth their own potential for reconnaissance with those buried parts of their subconscious. The island is healing for both the dead, and for the living to access the forgotten and stillborn aspects of their psyche, and to provide themselves with the care and nurturing as expressed by the adoption of the forgotten dead.