Tissues, Cultures, Art narrates the twenty-five years of collaborative and sometimes provocative artistic practice and scholarly thought of Catts & Zurr, who pioneered the use of regenerative biology techniques to create Semi-Living art using living cells, tissues, and technological surrogate bodies. Through hands-on work in biological laboratories, the authors researched concepts such as partial-life and DNA-Chauvinism and explored the fantasies of living in a technologically mediated victimless utopia. The authors delve into life’s resistance to reductionism, systemisation and control, asking whether there is something unique to life without the need to resort to metaphysics. Their practices reach beyond the confines of art and are often cited as precursors to the cellular agriculture and biofabrication industries.
Through a hybrid of personal reflections, poetics, and anecdotes with a more rigorous, scholarly approach – all illustrated with artworks - the authors present a critical view on the use of life as a raw material for human manipulation.
Author(s): Ionat Zurr, Oron Catts
Series: Palgrave BioArt
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 159
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Contents
List of Figures
1 The Semi-living
Early Years of Tissue Culture
Alexis Carrel and Revivalism
The Laboratory
Honor Bridget Fell and the Tissue Culture Point of View
Tissue Culture and the Popular Imagination
Dr Joseph P. Vacanti and Tissue Engineering
TE for Non-biomedical Purposes
Cells Plasticity in Vitro
References
2 Information, Genohype and DNA Chauvinism
Pig Wings, 2000–2001
DNA Chauvinism
Crude Matter, 2012
Mechanism of Life – After Stéphane Leduc, 2013
References
3 Who Cares? Outsourcing Labour to Incubators
The Story of the Incubators
The Semi-living Worry Dolls (2000)
Vessels of Care & Control – The Compostcubator (2016 – Onwards)
The Invisibility of the Modern Incubator
References
4 The Reverse Ontology of Sentience: The Technologically Mediated Victimless Utopia
References
5 Taxonomies, Categorizations and Queer Life
NoArk, 2007
Neolife
Biomess, 2018
Sea Star Comets
Sponges
Hard Corals
Leopard Slugs
Seahorse
West Australian Jewel Beetle
Ruffs
Crossing Kingdoms, 2018
References
6 Concluding Notes: Secular Vitalism
Historical Ponderings
The Poverty of Language
References
Index
