With her closed-circuit video installation MUTATION – PRODUCT OF LIFE (2002), Sabine Kacunko finished probably the ‘highest ranking’ theme circle of her art; the circle in which ‘the animate light’ (Hildegard von Bingen) was ‘earthed’ for the first time and brought down to the micro level. The work was an interactive, large image installation consisting of slide material 400 cm high and 160 cm wide. A boar skull was chosen as a motif, a large-sized black-and-white photo work of the artist (Skull [Schädel], 1997), whose negative was starting to fall apart due to colonisation by bacteria. This act of colonisation of the allegedly ‘dead’ by the allegedly ‘living’ can be marked as the beginning of the ‘bacterial art’ of Sabine Kacunko. The process set in motion was documented with a digital imaging procedure by using slides to present the decay of the negative from its initial stage to the advanced destruction.
Reproduced were among other negatives of the wild boar skull (Scull, 1997) populated by with microorganisms. Fungi (Aspergillus versicolor, Trichoderma sp. Phoma sp.) and bacteria (Pseudomonas, Bacillus sp. Corynebacterium) were applied and cultured for Sabine Kacunko by Wolfgang E. Krumbein at the University of Oldenburg.
