Partial Life

 

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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.

‘The semi-living’ and ‘partial life’ can be seen as interchangeable terms. There are, however, some nuances between the two. Semi-living entities are usually shaped as forms that are not recognisable as being part of any particular body; partial life can be recognised as parts (such as an ear or tissue) of the whole of a living being. Symbolically, on the continuum of man-made life, semi-living entities are nearer to the constructed side of the scale, while objects of partial life find themselves closer to the grown side of the scale. The ‘population’ of what can be referred to as partial life and semi-living entities has proliferated to reach a vast amount of cells and tissues that are currently living and growing outside of the organisms from which they originated. A rough estimate would put the biomass of the living cells and tissues which are disassociated from the original bodies that once hosted them at millions of tons. In addition, there exist tons of fragments of bodies (cells, tissues, organs) that are maintained in suspended animation in cryogenic conditions. All of this biomass requires an intensive technological intervention to prevent transformation to a non-living state. These beings are rarely referred to as subjects; their existence, supported as it is by the techno-scientific project, is indicative of the transformation of life into a raw material that manifests itself in utilitarian and economic value. (more...)

The Historical Perspective on the Semi-Living

Precursors of the Semi-Living

Standard of the World Cyphers Incubator Company, Buffalo N.Y., U.S.A. Annual catalogue, published 1896.

Poultry Growers' Guide for 1912, published by Buffalo, Cyphers Incubator Co.

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
Men, the Unknown

Early Tissue Culture in the UK

Duncan Wilson
Early Tissue Culture in Britain: The Interwar Years

The Tissue Culture King

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

Tissue Engineering

R. Langer and J. P. Vacanti
Tissue Engineering

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 <br.
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

Cell Fusion

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

Deborah P Dixon
Creating the Semi-Living: On Politics, Aesthetics and the More-Than-Human

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

Neolife

The Tissue Culture and Art Project

The Frozen Ark Project

Attributions