'Change battery every thousand hours'
The concept of balance reigns supreme in Beuys’ Capri-Batterie. Made in the final year of his life, while recuperating from lung disease on the island of Capri, this late multiple brings the sunshine of the Mediterranean home to a weakened aging artist. Simply put, a light bulb is inserted into a lemon, merging the natural and the man-made worlds into one.
Combining the organic with the artificial, Beuys re-enacts the ecological mechanism of balance through opposition. The lemon grows by storing the electromagnetic radiation transmitted by the sun through the naturally occurring process of photosynthesis. As a manufactured product, the light bulb is instead contingent on human intervention. Placed together, the objects acquire a multiplicity of meaning: the light bulb represents man’s triumph over nature, as the lemon ripens at a slow pace, the former’s efficacy separates it from the biological realm. Like many of Beuys’ works, scientific properties are also incorporated within the overarching symbolism: according to the laws of physics, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, just transformed. As the light bulb uses the lemon as its power source, transferring its energy, Beuys finally situates man’s ingenuity as dependent on nature.
Failing to realise its only function as it is never turned on, the light bulb is ever lasting, while the lemon will inevitably deteriorate, as all biological matter does. The ephemeral quality of life, set against the perpetuity of the man-made, draws attention to the parasitic effect that society has on the natural world. Not least, due to the increasing necessity for a sustainable solution to non-degradable, artificial waste. While practically false, the symbiosis of the two objects presents this universal truth, leading us, also through the objects’ yellow colour, to the sun – our ultimate energy source. As the sun fuels our planet, so our planet fuels our society. For Beuys, nature held innate meanings capable of guiding human thought and action; Capri-Batterie is rooted in this premise, prompting the conversations surrounding energy, a subject that could not be more topical today.
