Partial Life
edited by Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
Introduction
This Living Book is partially living – it is about the semi-living and partial lives, about tissues without a body. While the biological body cannot survive without organs and cells, the latter two groups can survive in a technological body, which has been removed and separated from their original biological body. They are living fragments of biological bodies, forms of lab-grown life which have been reconfigured, mixed and remixed, reappropriated, recontextualised and instrumentalised. The semi-living thus require a different epistemological and ontological understanding as well as a different consideration and, by extension, a different taxonomy of life. The liminality of this kind of technological approach to life can lead to a form of fetishism -- Neolifism. The semi-living and partial lives are a new class of objects or beings. In most cases they consist of living and non-living materials; of cells and/or tissues from a complex organism which have been grown over, or into, constructed scaffolds and subsequently kept alive with an artificial support. They are both similar and different from other human artefacts (Homo sapiens’ extended phenotype), such as constructed objects and selectively bred domestic plants and animals (both pets and husbandry). These entities are living biological systems which are artificially designed and which, in their isolation, construction, growth and maintenance, need technological intervention. (more...)
The Historical Perspective on the Semi-Living
Precursors of the Semi-Living
- Dr Lawrence M. Gartner and Dr Carol B. Gartner
- The Care of Premature Infants: Historical Perspective
The History of Tissue Culture
- Alexis Carrel
- On the Permanent Life of Tissues Outside of the Organism
- Alexis Carrel and Montrose T. Burrows
- Cultivation of Tissues In Vitro and Its Technique
- Alexis Carrel and Montrose T. Burrows
- An Addition to the Technique of the Cultivation of Tissues In Vitro
- Alexis Carrel
- Contributions to the Study of the Mechanism of the Growth of Connective Tissue
- J. A. Witkowski
- Alexis Carrel and the Mysticism of Tissue Culture
- Alexis Carrel
- Man, the Unknown
- Julian Huxley
- The Tissue Culture King
The Plasticity of Cell Lines
- About the ATCC-LGC Standards Partnership, which facilitates the distribution of ATCC cultures and bioproducts to life science researchers throughout Europe and India
- Stephen J. O'Brien
- Cell Culture Forensics
- Brendan P. Lucey, Walter A. Nelson-Rees and Grover M. Hutchins
- Henrietta Lacks, HeLa Cells, and Cell Culture Contamination
The Technoscientific Body
- Mark J. Powers et al.
- A Microfabricated Array Bioreactor for Perfused 3D Liver Culture
- Jianzhong Xi, Jacob J. Schmidt and Carlo D. Montemagno
- Self-Assembled Microdevices Driven by Muscle
- Thomas Boland et al.
- Cell and Organ Printing 2: Fusion of Cell Aggregates in Three-Dimensional Gels
- I. Datar and M. Betti
- Possibilities for an In Vitro Meat Production System
- P. D. Edelman et al.
- In Vitro Cultured Meat Production
Cell Fusion
Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cells
- Jeremy P. Brockes and Anoop Kumar
- Appendage Regeneration in Adult Vertebrates and Implications for Regenerative Medicine
- Farhan Chowdhury et al.
- Soft Substrates Promote Homogeneous Self Renewal of Embryonic Stem Cells via Downregulating Cell-Matrix Tractions
- Hannah Landecker
- Living Differently in Time: Plasticity, Temporality, and Cellular Biotechnologies
Semi-Living Art
- Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
- Towards a New Class of Being –The Extended Body
- Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr
- Big Pigs, Small Wings: On Genohype and Artistic Autonomy
- Oron Catts, ed.
- The Aesthetics of Care