The Aesthetics of Decay
In her series „Memento Mori“, Sabine Kacunko presents a profound visual meditation on the cycle of decay and regeneration, and a moving homage to the late microbiologist Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Wolfgang E. Krumbein (1937–2021). Marking the 25th anniversary of their groundbreaking interdisciplinary collaboration, this series elevates the microscopic processes of material decomposition to the scale of monumental art. Kacunko reveals the progressive degradation of her own archival photographic (digitalized) negatives. The primary motif—a wild boar skull, originally captured in stark black-and-white in 1997—is now presented in various phases of decomposition. What was once a static monochromatic record of bone has been transformed by flourishing colonies of fungi and bacteria into a vibrant, chromatic topography. It is a striking visual paradox: the image of death, systematically consumed and vividly colored by the microscopic engines of life.
The series „Memento Mori“ is hence not a “retrospective”. It is a continuation of a living process. Each work shows, in high resolution and in full chromatic intensity, the negative of her earlier photographs – „SKULL [SCHÄDEL], 1997“ – in different phases of biological degradation. What we see is not a photograph of a skull. What we see is a photograph of a photograph being eaten, transformed and „repainted“ by „life“.
The motif is deliberate. The boar skull (and also the fish – another motive, on which the artist worked, also with Prof. Krumbein) are among the two oldest memento mori of Western image history: one terrestrial, mammalian, tied to the hunt, to war, to vanitas; the other aquatic, ichthyological, the „Ichthys“ of the catacombs, symbol of the soul and of silent transience. Kacunko photographed both in 1997 as large-scale, austere black-and-white works. Their negatives, on gelatin silver, were presumed stable, presumed dead.
The decisive event occurred shortly thereafter. The negative of SKULL began to fall apart. Bacteria colonized the gelatin. The allegedly dead carrier was inhabited by the living. Kacunko chose not to stop the process. This act – to allow the colonization – marks the beginning of her bacterial art. It was documented for the first time in the closed-circuit video installation MUTATION – PRODUCT OF LIFE, 2002. Kacunko herself described this work as the closing of the highest-ranking circle of her art up to that point, the circle in which the ”lux animata”, the ‘animate light’ in the words of Hildegard von Bingen, was for the first time earthed and brought down to the micro level. The installation was conceived as an interactive monumental image: slide material 400 cm high and 160 cm wide, showing in sequence the decay of the negative from its initial legibility to its advanced destruction into a microbial landscape.
For the scientific realization, Kacunko entered into her first collaboration with Wolfgang E. Krumbein at the University of Oldenburg. At the Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Krumbein cultured and applied for her the very organisms that now return in Memento Mori: fungi such as Aspergillus versicolor, Trichoderma sp., Phoma sp. and bacteria such as Pseudomonas, Bacillus sp., Corynebacterium. It was the first of many collaborations between the artist and the scientist, who passed away on April 4, 2021 in Berlin.
The Color of Decay – Biopatina as Image – The Materialization of Time
The negative is no longer an image carrier; it has become a biotope. [Krumbein] The works show successive stages of that biotope. In an early phase, the skull is still recognizable, but veiled by a fine mycelial web. In a middle phase, the bony structure fractures into islands, separated by colonies that spread like continents. In a late phase, the figurative disappears completely and what remains is pure biogenic abstraction – a field of pigments, spores, crystallization rims and bacterial slime.
The color, which is one of the central “events” of the new series, is not applied and not digitally added. It is produced by the organisms themselves. This is the core of Krumbein’s lifelong research on what he termed „Biopatina“, a concept that has become central not only for heritage science and UNESCO monument preservation but for the understanding of surface, health and environment.
To fully grasp Kacunko´s entire Big Bacteria Picture Series, one must understand the central scientific and philosophical concept that defined Krumbein’s career: Biopatina. For centuries, the concept of “patina” was largely understood as a chemical or physical weathering process—the greening of copper roofs, the darkening of oil paintings, or the atmospheric soiling of ancient marble. However, Krumbein fundamentally redefined patina as a highly complex, dynamic ecosystem. He proved that the degradation of cultural heritage sites, buildings, and monuments was not solely the result of climate and pollution, but largely a biogenic process driven by microbial life.
Also in the Memento Mori-series, the brilliant colors that bloom across the decaying negatives—vibrant yellows, deep oranges, and shadowy blacks—are not photographic artifacts. They are biological pigments. As Krumbein noted in his extensive research, these striking hues derive from melanin, chlorophyll, and carotenoids produced by the metabolism of microscopic fungi and bacteria.
In Krumbein’s philosophical framework, patina is not synonymous with mere ruin or destruction. It is, instead, a materialization of time and space. When an object acquires patina, it fixes the fleeting nature of time into a tangible form, bestowing the object with what Walter Benjamin might call its Aura. Kacunko’s new series embraces this philosophy entirely. By allowing her original artwork to be consumed and structurally altered, she surrenders the illusion of the “unchanging original.” The decay does not erase the image of the boar skull and the fish; rather, it adds a new, living layer of aesthetic and historical value. The microorganisms literally paint the passage of time onto the film.
By returning to the original negatives and Krumbein’s microbial specimens in 2026, Kacunko closes a 25-year loop. The artwork is no longer just a representation of a subject; it is a biological event. It stands as a testament to Wolfgang E. Krumbein’s vision—a brilliant demonstration that even in the heart of decay, there is an undeniable, radiant persistence of life.
Krumbein – Art, Science, Heritage, Life
Krumbein, born 1937 in Munich, founder of geomicrobiology as a discipline, first chair of geomicrobiology worldwide at the University of Oldenburg from 1974, director of the ICBM, member of the Institute of Philosophy, author of over 400 papers and 15 books, holder of the Pasteur Medal and honorary doctorates from Moscow and Gdansk, gave in 1992 a definition that changed the field:
“Patina is the sum of material and structural changes in the surface-near zone of all materials and especially of art monuments, which changes arise through aging / material fatigue and through environmental influences.”
With this, he dismantled two centuries of misreading. Patina is not noble dirt, not the soft dark tone on old paintings, not the green on bronze that was later imitated. And crucially, as his analyses of blackened marble from Athens and Vienna proved, the most debated discolorations – yellow, orange, brown to deep black – are not, as long assumed, the result of air pollution, industrial dust and soot. Less than 1% of particles could be traced to airborne pollutants. The cause is biological. Dark-pigmented fungi, the black yeast-like micromycetes, iron- and manganese-oxidizing bacteria, cyanobacteria and algae produce pigments as products of their metabolism: melanins, carotenoids, chlorophylls and their extracellular polymerization and oxidation products. These pigments adsorb across the whole visible spectrum and can penetrate deeply into the substrate. They are the reason why a surface turns ochre, rust-red, or black.
In Memento Mori, this theory becomes visible as „painting“. The acid yellow is the metabolic yellow of Aspergillus versicolor. The deep brown-black is melanin from Phoma. The violet-brown halos are oxidized chlorophylls of dead cyanobacterial mats. The negative that was once black-and-white is now recolored by life itself. „The artist does not colorize; she allows the bacteria to color“. [Krumbein] This is why Krumbein spoke of patina as ambivalent: it is at once decay and protection. It is the materialization of time. There is no unchanging surface, he argued. Every surface exposed to the environment is in a permanent, dynamic exchange of matter and energy between substrate and atmosphere. Patina formation can come to a temporary standstill when processes compensate each other – appearing as a stable, characterful skin – but it can revive at any moment. Patinated surfaces are thus time witnesses, ”Zeitzeugen”, and witnesses of past environmental conditions. They tell the reception history of an object, not only its production history.
Kacunko’s microscopic images are precisely such reception histories. They are portraits of time acting on an image.
Homage – The Afterlife of a Collaboration
To call this series Memento Mori is therefore to invert the traditional meaning of the phrase. A classical memento mori reminds the living that they will die. Here, the reminder is addressed to the dead image, to remind it that it will live. The skull, archetype of death, is not depicted as dead. It is shown as a substrate for new life. The scull is not preserved. It is transformed.
The homage to Wolfgang E. Krumbein is thus not symbolic. It is material and literal. For this series, Kacunko has worked with Krumbein’s original specimens, preserved at BIOGEMA in Berlin, from his own collection. His hand, in the form of cultures he isolated decades ago, continues to paint on her negatives. The 25th anniversary of a collaboration that began in 2001/2002 is therefore not commemorated with a retrospective, but with a renewed joint work – a posthumous co-authorship in which the scientist remains active as a biological agent. Krumbein, who privately painted more than 4,000 watercolors, wrote poetry, and worked in monument preservation, always understood science as a form of cultural memory. He liked to refer, in his popular lectures, to Loriot’s ”Steinlaus”, the stone louse that eats monuments, to explain that stones are never just stones. They are inhabited.
In the same way, Kacunko’s negatives are never just negatives. They are inhabited images. Krumbein also wrote extensively on the relationship between patina and aura. With references to Hegel’s concept of „Wahlverwandtschaft“ and to Adorno, he argued: something acquires aura when it is fixed as something transient and when this fixed transient is endowed with brilliance, with „Glanz“. When past time is fixed in the shining patina, therein lies a potential pointing to the future. Memento Mori fixes exactly this transient brilliance. The monumental melancholy of the 1997 skull does not disappear. It is elevated. Through decay, it gains what restoration could never give to it: an authentic patina, a living aura that cannot be faked because it is not made to look old. It ”is” old, and it is alive at the same time. [Krumbein]
What we see, finally, is not an image of death, but death as a product of life – MUTATION – PRODUCT OF LIFE, twenty-five years later. A memento mori that no longer says: remember you must die. But: remember that even what has died will be lived on by others.
Prof. Dr. Dr. h. c. mult. Wolfgang Elisabeth Krumbein, an evaluation-notice of Sabine Kacunko´s Project
“As a member of ICOMOS, an expert consultant for the Acropolis monuments in Athens, and a pioneer in the field of biopatina research, I observe that the BOOTSCHAFT [MESSAGE] project by the brilliant black-and-white photographer and video artist Sabine Kacunko captures the very pulse of the times. Her PATINA PROJECT looks both to the future and to the past. Dust from millennia circles the globe, settling upon monuments and art objects, upon the living, the dead, and all that has passed away. Yet this dust holds life and the history of life, depositing itself in thin layers upon earthly objects. Kacunko succeeds—with astonishing elegance—in using her media installations not merely to freeze the colors, images, and sounds circling the globe into static photographs, but to forge an electronic connection between them and the viewer. Our project evokes Joseph Beuys’s *Honey Pump* and „Earth Telephone“. It involves a form of subterranean hypnosis that grips the viewer—and is, in turn, modified by them. The analog archives of the past are digitized and visualized. The omnipresent microbes—which embody the ravages of time, consuming everything and transforming all colors into shades of patina—are drawn into the viewer’s perceptual horizon through the use of microscopes and computer technology. In short: this artistic project is not postmodern; it is a product of its time—a signpost guiding us through the 21st century.”
(Wolfgang Elisabeth Krumbein, Berlin, July 9, 2009)
On Big Bacteria Picture Series
Note on sales
Each series is produced in two separate edition lines. There is a portfolio edition (an edition of 5, collectible only as a complete set) and a single-image edition (an edition of 25 per motif, available for individual purchase).
Substantive aspects
“big bacteria” is a long-term project by Sabine Kacunko (since 2002) that features bacteria as the facts of the permanently changing and sensing living matter. It documents microbially induced transformation processes when applicated to art and heritage, health and societies as well as to analogue and digital ecosystems. Big bacteria is a kind of ongoing, “living” art archive and an original artwork at the same time. Under the same, EU-patented lable, the artist co-founded also an international research network back in 2014.
In her earlier projects (Project p.o.l. art), the artist “animated” the analogue b/w negatives due to colonization by bacteria, and she documented the decay with a digital imaging procedure that generated a variety of colorful microscopic images of the pigment-producing bacteria; in the next stage, some of these images were projected onto the large architectural surfaces, from which they stem – they moved from the artistic studio and scientific lab out to the public space to initiate the open discourse about health and heritage (Project bootschaft); since then and at present, the big bacteria archive is set up as a free accessible work-in-progress to question and publicly discuss the inimitability of the presented life cycle of „non-fungible“ life that becomes a „non-fungible“ art (and perhaps vice versa). (Project big bacteria)
By her Picture Series related to the big bacteria-project, Sabine Kacunko adresses all at once:
– “life” and its constraints
– “dead” and its “healing”
– deterioration and remediation
– materiality and visuality
– “animated” and “artificial”
– structuralism of microscopy and circuitry of processes
– stitching and sequencing
– “citizen science” and “world health”
– medical and environmental microbiology
– non-fungible “life” and non-fungible “art”
– archive and curation
– human and non-human “autorship”
– scalleability of „images“ and „pictures“
Bacteria in this context,
– stand for original one-cell “living matter”
– stand for diversity, variety and ubiquity
– serve as models for individuation, agency and selfhood
– serve as models observing- and interpreting systems
– serve as models for study of humans
– are applicable in the natural- and cultural health- and heritage contexts
– exhibit a form of organization that is responsible for interpreting and changing the processes in which it is involved
Formal Aspects
The following remarks address constants—relating to image theory and the apparatus, as well as morphology and material-medial characteristics—found in Sabine Kacunko’s picture series.
1. Constants of Image Theory and Apparatus
In her investigations into transformative (micro-)biological processes, the artist employs various imaging techniques that enable the identification of the relevant structures or organisms within their environments; these include: light microscopy (transmitted-light and reflected-light microscopy, including brightfield, darkfield, phase contrast, polarization, stereomicroscopy, and fluorescence), electron microscopy (scanning electron microscopy [SEM] and transmission electron microscopy [TEM]), and scanning probe microscopy. As the artist frequently utilizes these three microscopy methods, they are briefly explained here:
a. In brightfield microscopy, the microbe presents itself as an absorbing area through absorption contrast: light shines directly through the specimen from below. Structures become visible in the image only if they absorb a portion of this light. This is necessary because most microorganisms (such as bacteria) consist largely of water and are nearly transparent; consequently, in their living, natural state, they provide little contrast. Chemical preparation and staining (e.g., Gram staining) are usually essential to distinguish internal cell structures or cell walls from one another. In this setup, the resulting image appears predominantly flat, graphic, and two-dimensional. The microbe appears as a dark or colored silhouette against a dominant, bright background.
b. In darkfield microscopy, a central stop in the condenser blocks direct transmitted light. The sample is illuminated exclusively by oblique light rays forming a hollow cone of light. Scattered-light contrast causes homogeneous, transparent areas of the cell to remain dark, while edges and fine surface details—which often remain invisible in brightfield—stand out sharply. As a result, the resulting image possesses a highly three-dimensional, almost sculptural quality. The microbe appears immaterial, …self-illuminating and isolated against a pitch-black background—a presentation often reminiscent of astronomical imagery.
c. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) creates a unique visual language that differs significantly from classical light microscopy. Its impact can be categorized into structural and aesthetic effects: extreme depth of field is the most striking structural effect; unlike the extremely shallow focus of a light microscope, the SEM keeps almost the entire three-dimensional object in sharp focus. The SEM scans the object with an electron beam, directing focus toward surface topography: only the outermost interface (the relief) is imaged. The interior of the sample remains hidden, bringing physical texture (cracks, pores, fine hairs) radically to the fore—all at nanometer resolution. Aesthetically, SEM images resemble sculptural, three-dimensional forms or monumental landscapes (“microlandscapes”). Since electrons lack color, original images are always black and white. This focuses attention purely on form, contrast, light, and shadow (akin to analog black-and-white photography) and emphasizes the geometric purity of the structures. At the same time, the objects appear monumental, alien (“surreal”), and often like artificially created, futuristic art objects.
However, through subsequent digital colorization, these SEM images can also take on a hyper-real, almost “pop” or psychedelic aesthetic. However, through subsequent digital colorization, SEM images can also take on a hyper-real, almost pop-art or psychedelic aesthetic—though the artist has not employed this technique so far. To date, she has used only the method of labeling: typically employed in light or fluorescence microscopy, this involves chemically marking biological samples with special dyes or fluorescent antibodies prior to imaging. Specific cell components or proteins then glow on their own under the microscope. In this case, the color is generated during the imaging process itself, rather than being added later on a computer.
The artist harnesses the diversity and captivating nature of microscopic images by critically examining the image itself and the imaging processes involved.
2. Morphological Constants
In Sabine Kacunko’s series, one encounters all the principal morphological forms of bacteria—spherical (cocci), rod-shaped (bacilli), as well as comma- and spiral-shaped structures. Furthermore—reflecting the more common scientific method of bacterial classification—the bacteria appear with either thicker (Gram-positive) or thinner (Gram-negative) membranes; this indicates that the identification and further differentiation of these ancient life forms are often linked to the medium or environment in which they “appear.” The diversity in the visual appearance of microbiological organisms within their equally varied growth media has thus become a virtually inexhaustible field of artistic exploration, finding a particularly fitting medium of expression in Sabine Kacunko’s various image series.
The artist also addresses the interplay between the visual appearance of microbiological growth media and the morphology of the microorganisms cultivated or simply observed within them. The medium reveals itself to be a morphological agent, for preparatory media do not behave passively. Chemical fixation, dehydration processes (e.g., for SEM), or resin embedding physically alter the organic material (causing shrinkage or membrane collapse). The documented form is invariably a hybrid of biological structure and instrumental intervention.
3. Material and Medial Constants
Microbiology employs a wide variety of culture media (or types of agar) to cultivate, select, or differentiate bacteria and fungi based on their specific properties:
a. enriched and general-purpose media such as blood agar (red, matte, and opaque), chocolate agar (chocolate-brown and opaque), or nutrient agar (pale yellowish to amber, clear and translucent; visually resembling firm, light-colored gelatin);
b. selective and differential media (for Gram-negative bacteria) such as MacConkey agar (reddish-violet to pale pink and slightly translucent), CLED agar (pale green to blue-green and slightly translucent), and XLD agar (bright red and clear/translucent);
c. selective media (for Gram-positive bacteria) such as mannitol salt agar (Chapman agar; pink to reddish and transparent) and Columbia CNA agar (visually almost indistinguishable from standard blood agar: deep red and opaque, as it also contains sheep blood);
d. specialized media for fungi and mycobacteria such as Sabouraud agar (SDA; pale yellowish, beige, or light amber and relatively light in color) and Löwenstein-Jensen medium (opaque and mint-green to blue-green).
In her series of pictures, the artist combines the morphology of bacteria and fungi with the diverse visual characteristics of microbiological culture media; she allows a wide range of material samples or objects—as well as her own breath, saliva, or blood—to merge with the solidified substrate in the Petri dish. She observes the phases of these reactions, of growth or “decay,” and in doing so poses artistic questions that—not least—inspire wonder or provide inspiration to both laboratory professionals and the art-viewing public alike. Art and experiment merge into one another. The relationship between (instrumental) measurement and (human) perception is called into question, as is their respective connection to the famous dictum often attributed to Louis Pasteur: “The germ is nothing; the milieu is everything.” And what if milieu and germ were one and the same—and everything? (The famous quote “The microbe is nothing, the environment is everything” (often shortened to “The germ is nothing, the environment is everything”) is said to not have originated with Louis Pasteur himself, but with his great scientific rival, the French physician and chemist Antoine Béchamp.)
On the distinction between “image” and “picture”
The distinction between “image” and “picture” is of central importance in artist´s context. It marks the difference between a dataset and an object for viewing. The microscope generates an „image“ (a machine-readable, invisible data space representing the sample). However, once this image is finalized through stitching, color-coded, and viewed as a finished visual work—or assigned to a series by the artist or published as such—it becomes a „picture“ (an artifact with aesthetic and communicative impact).
- The “Image” (The epistemic image / The construct)
In science, an „image“ is primarily a dataset, a matrix of information. It is not necessarily tied to a physical medium and is often highly abstract.
- In microscopy: When a scanning electron microscope (SEM) scans the surface of a sample, it does not take a photograph. It measures electron currents and translates them into digital values. The result is an „image“.
- Stitching & sequencing: The tiles used in stitching or the Z-stacks (focal layers) are „images“. They consist of pure, manipulable data coordinates (X/Y/Z). An „image” can be calculated, algorithmically filtered, encoded with false colors, and seamlessly stitched together (image processing).
- The concept: The „image“ is the tool of knowledge acquisition.
- The “Picture” (The concrete artifact / The depiction)
A „picture“ is the concrete, physical, or framed manifestation of an „image“ for the human eye. It is the image as an object
- In practice: As soon as you view the computed image (the stitched bacterial colony) on a monitor as a self-contained visual work—embedding it in a PDF, exporting it as a JPEG, or printing it on photo paper—it becomes a „picture“.
- The significance: A „picture“ has a border (a frame), a surface, and often an aesthetic or representational intent. It represents an attempt to translate the complex, invisible data of the „image“ into an intelligible, two-dimensional form for the human viewer.
