PRODUCT LIFE is a live installation featuring moving images. It displays the disintegration of a negative (subject: fish) caused by bacterial consumption. During these metabolic processes, pigments are produced as a waste product—a phenomenon that can be observed live on a monitor. Digital imaging technology is used to demonstrate and document the decomposition process (see 1).
The negative, colonized by bacteria and fungi, is an original large-format negative from a black-and-white photographic work that has previously been exhibited internationally (see 2).
The destruction of the original negative renders the production of further positive prints impossible.The viewer bears witness to the various phases of decay and destruction. Yet, the ephemeral also holds the potential for something entirely new and different. During metabolic processes, the microorganisms excrete pigments. Digital imaging technology captures the newly generated image data—derived from the bacterial waste—and prints it onto fabric (see 4).
A monstrance crafted from copper holds a printed large-format communion wafer. The digitized image data derived from bacterial excreta was printed onto a communion wafer produced by microorganisms. This wafer serves as the substrate for the transformed image data (see 3).
Performance: During the opening reception, a male performer distributed communion wafers to the audience. These wafers bore the same “motif” as the group wafer. Thus, the “image” was carried back into the natural cycle by the art-interested visitor.
Comment
“Art must come at a price”—this phrase currently seems to hover like a dictum over Berlin’s art scene. While the Hamburger Bahnhof showcases celebrity series by the high-profile “brand” that is Andy Warhol, and the Neue Nationalgalerie invites us to Jeff Koons’s candy-colored, glossy “Celebration” exhibition—celebrating both his oversized sculptures and their equally oversized price tags—the exhibition “Wa(h)re Kunst” (a play on the German words for “commodity” and “true”) at the new Kreuzberg art association “ConcentArt e.V.” questions the ambivalent nature of art’s value.
Sabine Kacunko’s work PRODUCT LIFE demonstrates that artworks are ephemeral and subject to the laws of physics. The piece is an installation viewed through a microscope, revealing a photographic negative treated with a specific bacterial culture. The bacteria decompose and alter the original image while simultaneously “producing” new, unexpected visual worlds, which the artist then digitizes and transforms into new tableaux.
What is on display on Kreuzbergstraße is a play on market dynamics, advertising, and the material nature of art; above all, however, it represents a refreshing instance of art questioning its own value.
