"Fulfillment"
Contact is vital for human beings. Personal exchange and direct experience of the other person play an essential role in successful personal and social development. However, this has also enabled the Corona virus to spread - and united the continents in a very unique way: Hardly ever before has almost every country in the world faced an identical immediate challenge at the same time. On an international level, this has led to an expanded need for communication and additional exchange about the situation, but on an interpersonal level it has meant the opposite: separation.
Inge Miczka picks up on this dynamic in her new installation "Fulfillment": Using 10,000 glass vials used by pharmaceutical manufacturers to ship vaccine serum, the artist recreates the world map of the five continents. While circumnavigating the imposing floor installation of approx. 8 x 12 m, questions arise such as "What is the most sensible way of dealing with the virus?
could result from general vaccination advocacy?" or "Which national or po- litical aspects impede an overall international success?". Both the art- ificial installation and Inge Miczka leave questions like these open. Rather, the work opens one's "emotional eyes": it makes one aware at a glance that all people in the world are currently in almost the same situation: With a world population of about 8 billion people, each jar of serum corresponds to 800,000 people who have had their lives changed by Corona and are deprived of much. In addition, the 10,000 jars are not connected to each other, but are individually free-standing. The installation is thus inherently fragile - and at the same time as flexible as human society is. All in all, hope resonates: If vaccination rates were to increase, people from all countries and continents could soon be as physically close to each other as the jars in Inge Miczka's work promise.
With her floor installation, Inge Miczka continues her sustainably oriented basic artistic concept: she works with found or used material, places it in new, unusual contexts and thereby opens up further levels of content. Thus, the glass bottles of the installation are not ordered new goods, but unused scrap material, which the manufacturer gave to the artist.
Text: Daniel Scheffel