Cocoon Southern West Virginia by Kate Browne will be created in Boone County, West Virginia.

Cocoon is a 24 foot by 10 foot illuminated sculpture that people walk through and listen to the stories they’ve told Kate Browne in interviews. 

In West Virginia, Kate Browne’s interviews focus on the human complexities of communities in this hardworking region, where local people have had a long history with coal and have often experienced layoffs and migrations, pollution, loss of homes and epidemics, and most important have a strong connection to community and standing up for individual rights. Kate Browne is interested in showing how many of the people in West Virginia take charge of a bad situation, organize to change it, and by doing so build their own infrastructure. 

Today, it is important to hear and document how the history of union organizing for human rights is part of the stories and decisions local people are making today, about water, schools, safety, health, homes, and reimagining the future of where they live. Cocoon gives voice to these American stories.

The recorded stories will be heard inside the Cocoon sculpture at the location where the interviews took place, and Kate Browne hopes to publish a small book of the soundtrack of stories which will be given to the interviewees and available here on her website.

After about two-years interviewing people in southern West Virginia, Kate Browne will build the Cocoon at the interview location and have a evening when the Cocoon sculpture is illuminated and stories can be heard inside, before taking the sculpture on a trailer along Route 3 visiting the people at the places along the way. At each stop, local people will carry small lights where they have written the names of West Virginia places important to them. They will attach these deep red lights to the sculpture's outer skin, and then walk through the illuminated 10-by-26-foot Cocoon sculpture, listening to their stories. The participants' portraits will be projected onto the trees or buildings at these stops as the Cocoon travels through this part of West Virginia.

Dates:

• Performance-Installation outdoors: TBA

To know more about Cocoon, click here