Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, Lactating Bear holding a Sugar Beet in her paw, standing on top of a Corinthian column, acting as an antenna. Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, The Zuckerbarin sensitive to one particular tango, an adapted version of Berliner luft, induces a milking four times a day. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, Two Prismatic Chambers, the Sugar Alle, the Main Braiding Machine and the Four Bases, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, Primary Prismatic Chamber extracting sugars from the bear’s milk and bonding it on glass thread. Hamburger Bahnhof, 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, The sugar threads enter the Double Helix Encoder, which draws four threads from the four tapestries. Hamburger Bahnhof, 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, the bonded threads drawn along the Alle towards the Main Braiding Machine. Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, The sugar threads enter the Double Helix Encoder, which draws four threads from the four tapestries. Hamburger Bahnhof, 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, 24 instigators sugar threads, on the Main Braiding Machine, the bust of Max Delbruck is wound with the final DNA of Berlin, 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, 24 instigators sugar threads, on the Main Braiding Machine, the bust of Max Delbruck is wound with the final DNA of Berlin, 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, one of the 4 bases a Tapestry of the plot of Dr Mabuse–Fritz Lang which are unraveled by the Double Helix Encoder. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, Saturate Still, for extracting sugars from plants named after famous Berlin figures, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, Saturate Still, and glass distillation vessel for extracting sugars from plant matter, instrumental in assembling the 24 instigators, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbarin, Milk from the Zuckerbarin with a section of the finished DNA sugar thread around the neck of the bottle. 2003 See Editions.
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ABOUT DIE BERLINER ZUKEBÄRIN (2002 - 2003)
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin, 2002–2003, employs a metropolitan metaphor as a generative principle, concentrating on the Berlin’s role in the history of research into genetic functioning and manipulation as a trope for cultural and historical process.
A large female bear, a symbol of Berlin since 1280, stands on a Corinthian column, modeled on those at the Reichstag. This column, wound with copper tubing around its base, serves as an elaborate antenna, one attuned to receive a particular frequency, that of a radio station specializing in tango music. The bear is excited by a single song Das ist die Berliner Luft! (It’s Because of the Berlin Air!) On hearing this popular song the bear is milked by an automated goat milking machine attached to her two teats,and the milk pumped into an adjacent milk churn.
A radio sited at the base of the column scans the airwaves for all tangos—except Das ist die Berliner Luft!—these varied tunes are not the catalyst for the bear’s lactation but instead excite a second pump mechanism in the milk churn transferring the milk to the first of two glass tanks: the primary and secondary Prismatic Chambers.
It is in these two tanks that the sugars present in the bear’s milk are sequestered into their four individual constituent sugars: lactose, sucrose, fructose, and glucose. These four sugars are then individually bonded onto three glass filament threads that are meticulously twisted to form a single sugar strand.
The Braiding Machine in the far distance draws this strand down the allée of twenty-four sugar cones through a glass conduit. Each cone along this processional route sports a sash bearing the name of an Instigator, a Berlin personality—cultural, historical or scientific—who has given their name to a particular plant.
Four tapestries surround the braider, each is embroidered with texts and symbols representing a different aspect of Berlin’s history: a Durchsteckschüssel, a type of double-headed key found only in Berlin; a synopsis of Fritz Lang’s expressionist film Dr Mabuse, 1922; a Linden leaf, and its attendant mythology; finally a map of Berlin indicating the original gates to the inner city. During the course of the exhibition the embroideries are gradually unpicked, but the texts and images remain readable from the pattern of their stitch holes.
The four cultural bases (the unraveled threads from the embroideries) are directed by pulleys into the Double Helix Encoder, a densely geared mechanism which, by a system of counter-rotating drums, encases the strand from the secondary Prismatic Chamber in a double helix jacket. These four individual threads are analogous to adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine, the four constituent elements forming DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid); the order of their combination determines the expression of any given gene.
The fiber, from a single thread, becomes a three-core strand in the Prismatic Chambers, then a cored plait after jacketing by the Double Helix Encoder, and finally a complex double-jacketed interwoven braid. The same threads are always present in the braid but their precise combination is in constant flux; the Berlin Braid is an ever-changing sequence, endlessly reconfigured.
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