The Bones

South American forensic anthropologist Roberta Lobos is an expert in bone trauma. Across the world, she identifies the remains of victims of violent disappearances. After spending decades expanding her practice in a field that seems to keep growing, she decided to contact a group of artists with a simple but radical request:

“I have analysed data from bones from a scientific perspective, resulting in hundreds of scientific reports. I want to know what would happen if we would set that data to music. I am sure we would hear more.”

We are deeply honoured by this request. To be called on by Roberta Lobos – and perhaps also by those who went missing, who, in turn, called upon her to create a new way of seeing or hearing these horrendous acts of violence. They ask us to honour their memory, to weave them back into the ecology of matter and meaning that forms our world. 

Can music be a place where the dead speak to us in unexpected ways? How can we tune into them in order to really listen to the bones, the bodies, the stories, the conflicts, the violence and the unequal division of public grief? And what can we learn about how we are always connected to one another, dead or alive?

Text by KVS