Semi Living Art: Towards a Neovitalist Perspective

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.

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.