Two projections were applied on the façade of CHB. Visitors experienced live multimedia installation whilst these at the same time depicted the environmental influences present as microorganisms in the artists’ own blood, which was in turn projected onto CHBs building’s façade. The video and audio footage reacted not just with each other but were linked to each other and where the delivery ‘authentic sound structures’ emerged, which reminded one of an urban landscape always in motion and mutation until blood stoppage. The windowpanes developed not only a membrane between the inner and outer areas which were projected on the window fronts of the building but also a timeslot in which the micro and macrocosms met.
Comment
As part of Berlin’s thematic year “Destroyed Diversity” (Zerstörte Vielfalt), the art project LOOPING LIFE by Sabine Kacunko was taking place within the urban landscape of Berlin. The project launched with the performance “hit and run”—featuring two dancers from the Sasha Waltz company—and an accompanying exhibition at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin; it was dedicated to an early pioneer of antiseptic procedures: Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865). The Hungarian scientist is counted among the victims of his own work. This Catholic physician grew up in the vicinity of a Jewish community; due to his name and his background, he was repeatedly subjected to antisemitic hostility—much as was the case, for instance, under the leadership of the Nazi regime in Germany from 1933 to 1945. Semmelweis attributed the varying incidence of puerperal fever to a lack of hygiene among doctors and hospital staff, and consequently strove to introduce hygiene protocols. However, during Ignaz Semmelweis’s lifetime, his findings were not yet recognized; indeed, they were rejected—particularly by positivistically minded critics and colleagues—as “speculative nonsense.” Semmelweis suffered a mental breakdown and, in July 1865, was committed—without a formal diagnosis—to the Döbling Asylum near Vienna by three of his medical colleagues. According to some sources, Semmelweis’s admission to the institution may have been the result of a conspiracy. In 1862, in an open letter to the medical community, he had threatened to publicly denounce obstetricians as murderers because they still refused to implement his hygiene protocols. Two weeks after his admission, at the age of 47, he died of blood poisoning resulting from a minor injury he had sustained during an altercation with the asylum staff. According to other accounts, he was allegedly beaten to death by orderlies in the asylum courtyard (an exhumation of Semmelweis’s remains later revealed fractures to his hands, arms, and sternum). His medical records list “cerebral paralysis” as his cause of death. My own personal connection to the issue of hospital hygiene stems from my father, who himself contracted a dangerous infection in a hospital setting and continues to suffer from its aftereffects to this day. Drawing on his own experiences, he was later able to identify a similar situation involving his daughter in time to intervene: it was only after his personal intervention and persistence that the medical staff finally initiated treatment for my acute and life-threatening infection.
The accompanying sound was also generated live, driven by the movement of the blood and synchronized with the reactions displayed on the skin image. A transdisciplinary dialogue—bridging the natural and life sciences with the realm of culture— was thus set in motion, serving as a means to build bridges between these diverse disciplines.
Sound and video from the live performance “hit and run” were accessible to visitors not only on, in front of, and inside the .CHB, but also – via an app – the virtual realm. Through posters, flyers, and performers, the art intervention continues throughout the urban landscape of Berlin.
As part of the exhibition, installations, objects, and photographic works by Sabine Kacunko have been presented. Also, a film screening and panel: “Semmelweis – Savior of Mothers,” by and featuring Elfriede Brünning.
