Sounds of a Life Well-Loved, by Kat Nix and Connor Estes

Sounds of a Life Well-Loved, a two-day art installation by Kat Nix and Connor Estes. Exhibit runs from October 30–31. Artist's Statement Sounds of a Life Well-Loved explores pleasure and presence at life’s end through sound. By collecting and weaving participants’ most comforting and meaningful sounds into an immersive “Death Nest” installation, the project asks: How can we reclaim what a good death looks like? How does engaging our final sense reshape the way we live, connect, and witness one another? As we approach the end of life, hearing is often understood to be among the last senses to diminish. Oceana Sawyer, an end-of-life doula, cites Florence Nightingale in Life, Death, Grief, and the Possibility of Pleasure: “Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care that can be inflicted on the sick or the well.” Hospitals, hospices, and other spaces of death care are often filled with machines, beeps, alarms, or silence. Western approaches to dying tend to prioritize comfort and the absence of pain. Sawyer asks us to consider what might happen when we move beyond comfort and intentionally invite pleasure into the dying process. Inspired by Sawyer’s work and my own journey as a death companion, sound artist Connor Estes and I explore these questions through interviews with participants. We ask them to identify sounds that bring pleasure, comfort, presence, or a sense of being held—a loved one’s voice, wind, laughter, or something deeply specific to their own life. Estes weaves these voices and recordings into a layered audio collage, creating an intimate soundscape of the sounds participants would want present during their final moments. The soundtrack will be experienced inside a “Death Nest,” an immersive installation inspired by nesting before birth: intentionally creating a space of care for a major transition. Constructed from locally foraged willow branches, the nest creates a sheltered environment. Inside, a handmade bench by local artist Andrew Alba invites participants to sit and listen through headphones. Filtered light and local flowers create a quiet environment to listen and be held with whatever arises in their emotional landscape. Outside the nest, participants may contribute their own desired “last sounds” to a communal notebook. This project invites us to normalize conversations about death, reclaim autonomy within death care, and consider pleasure as a practice that can remain with us until our dying breath. Through listening, vulnerability, and collective imagination, we create space to witness both the grief of death and the possibility of a pleasurable, self-determined transition. This project is funded as a recipient of the Assemblage Art fund through UMOCA. Artist's Bio Kat Nix is a floral designer, artist, death companion, medicine maker and the owner of Ritual in Bloom, a floral business that centers rituals and intentionality in floral design. With deep gratitude for the resiliency, love and guidance of her ancestors and plantcestors, Kat is devoted to reclaiming and honoring ancestral medicine, grief and end of life work, and exploring how flowers hold both medicine and magic as we move through transitional spaces. Connor Estes is a sound artist, radio programmer, and photographer living in Salt Lake City. He looks to find the hidden in plain sight stories that make us human. Through sound collage, interviewing, and recording, Connor hopes to inspire and transform thinking through the power and intimacy of sound.