Sabine Kacunko

Sabine Kacunko (born November 5, 1963 in Kassel ) is a German artist . Your multimedia art installations usually take place in public spaces and build a bridge between art and science. Since 2003, Kacunko's work has also been referred to as bacterial art.

Life and professional history

After various internships at the theater and in the field of design , Sabine Kacunko first studied art history in Göttingen and industrial design at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, but then switched to the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in Krefeld. She continued her studies with Edgar Callahan and Nan Hoover at the Düsseldorf Art Academy . In 1993 Kacunko received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service for the Reykjavík School of Art.

Sabine Kacunko is the founder of “Micro Human UG.” And has lived in Berlin since 2008.

plant

Sabine Kacunko began with analogue large format black and white photography in the early 1990s. For these shots, Kacunko staged still lifes of plants and dead animals using only daylight. The resulting photographs formed the basis for her later bacterial art. Sabine Kacunko continued her artistic and scientific work under the umbrella term POL-Art (Product of Life).

Between 1997 and 1999, meetings between Sabine Kacunko and Louise Bourgeois took place in New York. The exchange between the artists culminated in the joint performance Kill the Father in 2001 .

In 2002 she presented her installation "CULTURE ROUND CULTURE". Here the artist had bacteria decompose the original negative of one of her photographic works of a fish (Fisch, 1997); the process of the disintegrating negative was shown live as a video projection.

In 2003 she showed a negative in the installation Leben im Kunstverein Coburg, which had been colonized with microbes twelve months earlier by Wolfgang E. Krumbein , Professor at the University of Oldenburg, Department of Microbiology .

Since 2005 she has been carrying out media art campaigns in the context of the global media art project “Bootschaft” in public spaces. In 2010, as part of the media performance Life Flag - News From Everywhere, a flag with a universal motif was hoisted in 80 diplomatic missions in Berlin and in the Foreign Ministry. The basis for the motif of the flag is the representation of bacterial cell cultures . In cooperation with the Institute for Microbiology and Hygiene of the Charité , microorganisms from a historical dust sample were reactivated and "revived" for Life Flag in the Robert Koch Forum in Berlin.

Exhibitions and actions in public space

• September 17-19 , 2015: Invincible. A Big Bacteria Projec t (Colosseum in Rome was illuminated by a live large projection by projecting bacteria removed from the surface of the monument onto its most exposed northwest side). An interdisciplinary cultural project under the patronage of UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova, the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Rome and the Department for Culture of the City of Rome.
• November 4, 2010: Life Propagation , Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (multi-day art campaign for the 300th anniversary of the Charité Berlin and as part of the Berlin financial year 2010)
• 2009: Organ Mix , TOTAL MUSEUM Seoul
• 2003 life . Coburg Art Association
• 1997 From the depths . Gallery New World Düsseldorf 1997

Web links

• Kacunko's website
• Sabine Kacunko on kunstaspekte.de
• Selected Works From the 90s

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BOAT SHIP - Sabine Kacunko. In: e-flux.com. Retrieved April 20, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Report on the action at Martin Gropius Bau in the Raumfunk magazine  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
3. ↑ Press release on the art campaign on Kunstaspekte.de
4. ↑ Article by Christiane Fricke in Kunstforum International ( Memento of the original from January 12, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Catalog: Catalog on ebay