‘Constellations’ is a participatory installation, that invites people to make a series of selections based on their experience with the death of someone in their social circle. Prompts aim to capture the experience individuals have, being a family member or close friend to a person dying: their relationship to the person dying, others within their network during the end of life period, supportive influences, compromising influences, the level of preparedness the individual and family felt as they moved into the end of life and after death.

People are invited to connect their responses through a single thread, resulting in a tactile snapshot (or map) of their experience. The analog format generates live-data throughout the Festival, culminating in a collection of contributions, revealing patterns of commonalities and anomalies about how end-of-life is shared among family members. People are invited to attach a written anecdote to their thread, providing context to the story that emerges from their responses. ‘Constellations’ provides a discreet way of sharing deeply personal experiences that can otherwise be difficult to share in a society that does not always want to talk about death.

What emerges is a tactile expression of the universal human experience of end-of-life.

Constellations was part of the 2019 Design TO festival, featuring the ‘Death and Dying’ series that explores the theme of end of life through the lens of design and art.

Karen and Kate recently recorded an episode of the podcast The Hospice Champliancy Show with Saul Ebema, November 6, 2023.

Episode 141: A conversation with Karen Oikonen and Kate Wilkes on Constellations: An intersection between design and end of life is available on Spotify, Apple Podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-141-a-conversation-with-karen-oikonen/id1497646343?i=1000633807356) and Transistor.fm (https://hospicechaplaincy.transistor.fm/episodes)