Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the Zuckerbärin is sensitive to one particular tango, an adapted version of Das ist die Berliner Luft!, inducing a milking four times a day. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the lactating Bear holding a sugar beet in her paw, standing atop a Corinthian column, which acts as an antenna, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the two Prismatic Chambers, the Sugar Alléa, the Main Braiding Machine, and the Four Bases, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the Primary Prismatic Chamber extracting sugars from the Bear’s milk and bonding it onto a glass thread. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the Primary Prismatic Chamber, showing the evaporator discs which spin and extract sugars from the Zuckerbarin’s milk. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the mother thread going from the Primary to the Secondary Prismatic Chamber. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the Secondary Prismatic Chamber, the two spools of glass thread being bonded with two separate sugars before being twisted with the mother thread from the Primary Prismatic Chamber. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the Secondary Prismatic Chamber, the two spools of glass thread being bonded with two separate sugars before being twisted with the mother thread from the Primary Prismatic Chamber. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the bonded threads drawn along the Allée towards the Main Braiding Machine. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the bonded threads drawn along the Allée towards the Main Braiding Machine. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the sugar threads enter the Double Helix Encoder, which draws four threads from the four tapestries. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the Main Braiding Machine, a bust of Max Delbrück is wound with the final DNA of Berlin. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the 24 Instigators' sugar threads, on the Main Braiding Machine, the bust of Max Delbrück is wound with the final DNA of Berlin. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: one of the four bases, a tapestry of the plot of Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse being unraveled by the Double Helix Encoder. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the Saturate Still extracts sugars from plants named after famous Berlin figures. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: the Saturate Still, and glass distillation vessel for extracting sugars from plant matter, instrumental in assembling the 24 Instigators. 2003
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: milk from the Zuckerbärin with a segment of the finished DNA sugar thread wound around the neck of the bottle. 2003 See Editions
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: a drawing of the Braiding Machine showing its mechanism and the counter-rotating drums on the Helix Encoder forming the double helix strand around the mother thread. 2002
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: drawing showing the gearing on the Braiding Machine's lace drawing mechanism. 2002
Die Berliner Zuckerbärin: an early layout of the various elements (the braiding machine and its relationship to the tapestries were later changed). 2002
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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 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's base, wound with copper tubing, 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 is pumped into an adjacent milk churn.
A radio at the base of the column scans the airwaves for all tangos (excepting 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.
In these two tanks the sugars present in the Bear’s milk are sequestered into their four constituent sugars: lactose, sucrose, fructose, and glucose. These sugars are then individually bonded onto three glass filament threads that are meticulously twisted to form a single sugar strand.
The Braiding Machine 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 city. During 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 of 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. For further information, see Die Berliner Zuckerbärin catalogue and Metropolis of Metaphorical Intimations
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