The analogue b/w large format negative of Sabine Kacunko’s earlier photo work (which depict aesthetic phenomena of organic origin such as natural objects) is artistically transformed by the artificial colonization of the negatives with microorganisms. The transformation of a black and white negative (motive: human skull) by the pathogenic bacteria colonies to colorfully live images was a part of a mix media Installation. Since the transfer of the pathogenic bacteria colonies brings the danger of infection with it, the bacteria-‘performance’ was shown for safety reasons as a live streaming. The streaming has been initiated at the Robert-Koch-Forum, Institute for Microbiology and Hygiene (Charité University Hospital) in Berlin, Germany, where the artificial colonization of the negatives with microorganisms took place. This had the consequence that the artificially ‘instigated’ bacterial decomposition lead of the premature destruction of the b/w negatives. The microorganism metabolic processes also produced the waste product of color pigments. With the assistance of digital imaging technology, this process of decomposition was visualized and documented at the various phases of decay and destruction. The changing coordinates of material and format, space and time, organic fragility and compelling design resulted in a remarkable aesthetical-epistemological mix. Despite its visual and technical mediation, the installation still stimulated the beholder’s range of intellectual and sensory experience.
For safety reasons (since in the settlement of the negative the pathogen microorganisms were involved) the laboratory of the Institute of Microbiology and Hygiene, Charité-University medicine in Berlin (CCM, Dorotheenstr. 96) was chosen as the site where the settlement of the negative took place, with cordially help of Annette Moter and her team.
The main theme of the piece was the artistic exploitation of organic decomposition processes. It was not focused primarily on the destructive moment, but on a creative power of ‘life’. Technology provided the observer only with an additional channel of perception. By ‘portraying’ the parallel existence of the micro- and macrocosms (as subjects of the ‘endo-‘ and ‘exophysics’) via multimedia technology the technology ‘reveals’ hidden parallel worlds which can be simultaneously perceived and reflected by the beholder. The resulting departure from the routine perception opens up a new perspective on a familiar environment thereby encouraging enhanced perception and cognition.
Comment
VISION. The Light Side of the Moon
This long-overdue manuscript had its beginnings on the night of October 3, 2009. The moon was illuminating Berlin with particular intensity, and the night preceding the full moon was especially well-suited for observing its surface. Yet, the craters and lunar maria along the terminator—the line separating light and shadow—did not appear particularly three-dimensional. Its mountains and valleys seemed to possess a soft-focus quality, as if enveloped in a fine, yellowish patina. Work on this text was repeatedly inspired or interrupted by such ‘visions,’ even though its aim—at once sober and hopeful—remained simply to examine the essential aspects of Sabine Kacunko’s ‘bacteria art’ from an art-historical perspective. Foremost among these was the perspective of the sense of sight and of vision itself: light that both gives and destroys life. The retrospective thus concludes with a media installation—currently on display at the Total Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul (September 18–November 15, 2009)—which, not least through its title VISION (2009), encapsulates the entire ‘salvific narrative’ of Kacunko’s art. On the surface, one sees live video images of a process of decay that simultaneously generates new life. The negative of a barren human skull—resembling the lunar surface—is being eroded by bacteria; it is captured by a digital network camera and transmitted to the Internet. Through the use of intermedial transformations, the motif of the photographed human skull (or an animal skull or skeleton)—a recurring element in the artist’s oeuvre—appears to penetrate ever-deeper dimensions of its biological and medial death, without ever reaching absolute zero. By populating the negative of her brilliantly photographed artwork with pathogenic microorganisms—organisms associated with the human realm—Sabine Kacunko points not only to the factual and symbolic cycle of life and death; she simultaneously reveals, in a striking manner, the resilient substance art can possess when it assumes profound meaning and significance in the lives of its visionaries.
The photographic print of the skull exhibited in the museum undergoes a final—or at least latest—stage of formal-aesthetic abstraction through the rendering of abstract microscopic images derived from the negative’s slowly changing surface. These color images form a perfect aesthetic contrast to the figurative black-and-white of the photographic print; furthermore, they are installed on-site as large-format fabric prints in the immediate vicinity of the natural rock formation, which has been deliberately preserved as part of the architecture.
Two days after the aforementioned ‘full moon vision’ over Berlin, a Boeing 747 carrying Sabine Kacunko took off from Berlin’s Tegel Airport, setting a course for Beijing: another powerful artistic vision of hers—one I shall return to later—was once again on the path to realization. At that very moment, in a cinema at Potsdamer Platz, I was watching the opening scene of Margarete von Trotta’s newly released film *Vision*: the full moon shone in all its splendor over the flat, snow-covered landscape on the final night of the penultimate millennium. On that last night of the first Christian millennium, it was widely believed that the final day of all had come to an end; all the more intense, then, must have been the bewilderment, fascination, and joy of the young Hildegard of Bingen when she beheld the sunlight the following morning—at least, such is the director’s striking artistic vision. Gratifying parallels—admittedly generalized, yet accurate and fitting—suggest themselves when one considers the vision and the (meta-)physics of light in Sabine Kacunko’s body of work alongside those of Germany’s first mystic: the Benedictine saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) described her own journey entirely in the spirit of the metaphysics of light:
“When I had passed beyond my girlhood years […] I heard a voice from heaven saying: ‘I am the living light that illuminates all darkness.’ […] I saw a great radiance. A heavenly voice rang out from it […] when I was forty-two years and seven months old, a fiery light, flashing like lightning, descended from the open heavens. It coursed through my brain and set my heart and breast aglow like a flame […].” (Johanna Lanczkowski (Ed.), *Mystische Texte des Mittelalters* [Mystical Texts of the Middle Ages]. Stuttgart 1988. Cited from: http://www.philos-website.de/)
If one wishes to summarize in advance the results of the observations and reflections presented here with regard to Sabine Kacunko’s ‘bacteria art,’ one could quote Hildegard—as portrayed in von Trotta’s film—verbatim: “You have the mission to reveal the hidden”—said the voice from the light. A vigilant Hildegard, endowed with a clear spirit, was the messenger of the living light, called upon to remind us of the invisible, for “God loves beauty.” Given the prominent role of the metaphysics of light in the European Middle Ages, light was considered not merely one characteristic of beauty, but *the* essential characteristic. Yet, as early as the time of Alhazen of Basra (Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn Al-Haitham, 965–1040), the work *Kitab al-Manazir* (*De aspectibus* or *Perspectiva*) began with a description of the pain experienced when looking directly at light. He compared this to observing a polished mirror reflecting sunlight that strikes the eyes, causing that same pain.
On the night of October 3, 2009—when this text was first conceived—the moon shone with particular intensity over Berlin. Although the night preceding the full moon was ideally suited for observing its surface, the craters and ‘seas’ along the lunar terminator did not appear particularly three-dimensional. Its mountains and valleys seemed to have a soft-focus quality, as if enveloped in a fine, yellowish layer of ‘patina.’ Inspired by this ‘vision,’ and after months of procrastination, I finally set to work on this long-overdue text.
(Slavko Kacunko)
