The installation presented on the large greenish screen a process of slow decomposition of a negative with the motif of a fish.
With this and numerous ensuing installations under the hypernym P.O.L. Art (Product of Life), Sabine Kacunko set out in widely uncharted artistic, medial and scientific waters. She became fully aware of the related risk at the moment of setting out. This group of works remained distinctive for the next decade, for example the installation CULTURE ROUND CULTURE (2002), in which the negative was exposed to the destruction through microorganisms for the first time. Here the artist let bacteria eat an original negative with the image of a fish (Fish, 1997). The process of the decomposing negative was projected live onto the wall with all the paradoxes showing up in this context. “The observer becomes,” Sabine Kacunko states in a description of the project, “a witness of the different phases of decay and destruction. The fleeting has the potential for something completely new and different.” This project questioned at a general level “the present time in the context of culture and religion” falling obviously on good ground. Culture Round Culture was the first realised collaboration between Sabine Kacunko and the geologist and microbiologist, Wolfgang Krumbein. The fruitful dialogue between art and science in the artist’s oeuvre has been deepened and intensified ever since; not least in the pursuit for the suitable mediation processes of this dialogue, which are increasingly shifting into the public sphere. (Bloody Moon; Endless)
In CULTURE ROUND CULTURE, a process of slow decomposition of a negative showing a fish was exhibited. Fungi (Aspergillus versicolor, Trichoderma sp. Phoma) and bacteria (Pseudomonas, Bacillus sp. Corynebacterium) were applied and cultured for Sabine Kacunko by Wolfgang E. Krumbein at the University of Oldenburg. A projector showed the various stages of decomposition of the negative lying under a video microscope. The viewer became a witness to the different stages of decay and destruction. The transient matter became the origin and formation agent of something entirely new and different. This project was realized in collaboration with Professor Krumbein, University of Oldenburg.
The Installation in Kassel was a part of the larger project entitled OUT OF CONTROL, itself spreading out in the public space in Kassel, and conceived as a Trilogie der Bewegung [Trilogy of the Movement] (06. 06. 2002). The first phase of the ‘trilogy’ represented a tram from the Kassel transport services covered with the photographed candles, as is known from the artist´s previous photographic work. The tram was transformed into an art object, a kind of ‘moving sculpture’.
The second phase of the trilogy, entitled Greetings from Above was represented the central event. It revolved around the exhibition in the Audi Centre in Dresdner Straße 5. in Kassel, in the immediate vicinity of the city center. The slow, spatial proximity to the exhibition site was an important element in the overall artist´s concept related to the mobility. Not only is the exhibition hall of the Audi Centre was involved in this kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, but also the free space around the car house. On the roof of the hall was a red beam of light shining in the night sky. As ‘guests of honor’ or ‘stars’ of the event, 8 black limousines were placed on an imaginary red carpet in red lit interior of the hall. From the limos a monotonous computer sound penetrated. On each of the roofs of a vehicle was posted a long candle without wick, with a monitor suspended above it, respectively. The video showed fire in an almond-shaped cutout of a black mask, so that the overall appearance was a reminiscent of the flame of the candle. The religious appeal of this installation refers to an almost religious worship of technological progress while the reality and virtuality were compared and scrutinized.
The third phase was the CULTURE ROUND CULTURE-Videoinstallation.
