There’s so much news every day. Who can keep up with it all…?
For example, I’m a couple-three months behind the curve on this:
One of the central works in the exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (until 12 May), Victimless Leather, a small jacket made up of embryonic stem cells taken from mice, has died. The artists, Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr, say the work which was fed nutrients by tube, expanded too quickly and clogged its own incubation system just five weeks after the show opened…
Ms Antonelli says the jacket “started growing, growing, growing until it became too big. And [the artists] were back in Australia, so I had to make the decision to kill it. And you know what? I felt I could not make that decision. I’ve always been pro-choice and all of a sudden I’m here not sleeping at night about killing a coat…That thing was never alive before it was grown.”
Will wonders never cease? Apparently not. Just for starters, what are the odds that a work of art made from mice would have originated with an artist named Catts?
(More details on the Victimless Leather project from Wired, a few years ago.)
sue says
hi john,
Does this tie into the “mixing mediums” discussion over on the awesomeizer blog? I’d never considered using mouse stem cells, embryonic or otherwise for making art. Hmmmm. Yep, too disturbing to contemplate futher.
John says
@sue – Ha ha — good catch! I didn’t even make the connection myself but you’re right… must be one of those “ideas that are suddenly everywhere” discussions. :)
(Thanks for stopping over, btw!)
marta says
Disturbing, amazing, intriguing… I missed this story (being way behind on the news myself), and so I’m glad you shared it.
Well, I get emotional throwing away a stuffed animal. I think part of the issue (aside from the stem cells) is that people tend to give objects they own some measure of life–hence why people keep too many trinkets and other things.
I realize that a growing coat is different than a plush toy, but maybe the growing part just added to the intensity of the experience.
John says
@marta – Ewww. I think you just raised my creeped-out index a couple of points, with the suggestion of a stuffed toy whose fur grows plusher by the minute (presumably till it fills the crib).
(He said, thanking the Fates that his niece, nephews, and stepchildren are well past the crib stage.)
marta says
Sorry. I didn’t mean to raise the creep-out factor.