Tissues, Cultures, Art is a timely reminder that urges us to rethink what is living, as it gets viewed and shaped through a techno-scientific lens. This book provides an important critique of the cultures incubated at laboratories, art exhibitions, and countless industries that promote hype cycles of engineering life. Zurr and Catts question the consequences of treating life as raw material: Which ideologies invented the disembodied body? Who gets to "control" as the living becomes food, materials, or “science”? How do we negotiate the responsibilities of being "human" in an increasingly challenged world? Like reading Frankestein backwards: We cannot grow answers, but can at least trace back how the flesh gets reimagined by the mind.
-Orkan Telhan, Associate Professor of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania

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