Overview
- Describes the artistic practices based in biological laboratories
- Elaborates tissue engineering and regenerative biology technologies to grow Semi-Living sculptures
- Story of the pioneers in BioArt who mentored a generation of artists working in biological laboratories
Part of the book series: Palgrave BioArt (PB)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
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.
Reviews
What happens when ‘life itself’ becomes not only an object of biopolitics, but also aresource to be commodified, controlled, engineered, consumed and monetised – presumably ad infinitum – in present-day capitalism?
In this urgently needed and brilliantly written book, bioart pioneers Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts take us on a fascinating journey: from the history of tissue engineering, through technoscientific manipulations of ‘bits of life’ and the accompanying ‘hidden’ violence, to their own artistic practices, critically engaged in contemporary discourses, transformations and modifications of biological matter. This book is an absolute must-read for anyone interested in the place ‘life’ holds at the intersection of contemporary science, technology, culture and society.
-Dr. Marietta Radomska, Assistant Professor, Linköping University
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Artists-researchers and Curators, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr formed the Tissue Culture & Art Project in 1996 and SymbioticA in 2000. Catts, the Co-Founder and Director of SymbioticA: the Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts was a Professor at Large in Contestable Design at the Royal College for the Arts UK. Zurr is the Chair of the Fine Arts Discipline at the University of Western Australia.
Both were Visiting professors at Biofilia, Aalto University, Finland; The Centre of Arts and Art History at Stanford University and Research Fellows at The Tissue Engineering & Organ Fabrication Laboratory, Harvard Medical School.
They are considered pioneers in the field of Biological Arts and their work was exhibited at MoMA NY, Pompidou Centre, Mori Art Museum, Ars Electronica and the National Art Museum of China.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Tissues, Cultures, Art
Authors: Ionat Zurr, Oron Catts
Series Title: Palgrave BioArt
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25887-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-25886-2Published: 30 March 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-25889-3Due: 29 August 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-25887-9Published: 29 March 2023
Series ISSN: 2731-3026
Series E-ISSN: 2731-3034
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVIII, 145
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 29 illustrations in colour
Topics: Audio-Visual Culture, Arts, Life Sciences, general