Richard Kriesche
«Eternal Light»

Although Kriesche himself describes ‘Eternal Light' as a media sculpture, the work in question is more a performance, or action, in public space. On the occasion of the ‘IFA' consumer electronics fair in Berlin in 1983, Kriesche mounted an iron girder upright in the ground. On top of it he horizontally balanced a second iron bar. At one end of this bar was a monitor, at the other a barrel filled with oil. The oil was set alight, and the flame, taped by a camera, appeared on the monitor through close-circuit technique.
Due to the fact that the weight of the barrel changed through the burning of the oil, the iron bar finally keeled off-balance, sending the monitor crashing down onto the pavement of the Kurfürstendamm boulevard in Berlin. This procedure was recorded by a second camera. Although the delicate balance between real flame and electronic flame Kriesche forged in this work was unable to be maintained for any length of time, at the end it was a triumph for TV technology as witness of the overall process, and archive for later generations.