The Aura Harvester

Material Narration

It started with collecting the dust from the artworks in Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
Dust is everywhere. It´s constantly reappearing and covering the surface of museum artworks. It needs to be removed to prevent damage on the paintings. Though on the other hand, every time the dust is wiped off, the painting´s surface is loosing a bit of its original components.

The Aura Harvester

That made me think that the dust literally contains the painting´s aura, so it also has a value. After all the dust from your shelf has different worth then from the Vermeer´s or Rembrandt´s painting.
I tried to ‚extract‘ the aura from the dust trough different experiments: reproducing by growing it´s bacteria, burning to obtain energy and reusing to create the pigment for paintings restoration.