Is it possible to produce a fur coat without killing an animal? The answer, in a word, is yes. Artists Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr have done it, and the result is on view in an installation called "Victimless Leather" at the Israeli Center for Digital Art in Holon. The two grew a miniature coat from living skin cells, in an improvised laboratory they established for this purpose at the center. The growth process, which requires a special technology, took place in the lab. For 11 days the two artists "fed" the cells, which grew and multiplied, creating a miniature coat. On the last day they "killed" the coat by no longer feeding it. The audience that viewed the display was taught how to create this kind of system by themselves.

The work by Catts and Zurr is part of an exhibition titled "Free Radicals," featuring projects that reach beyond the boundaries of the arts into other fields. The result is an intriguing discourse on the limits of freedom of expression, democratization of knowledge and the question of whether it is permissible, in the name of art, to do what would be prohibited in any other sphere.

Catts, 39, and Zurr, 37, a married couple with a 3-year-old daughter, are among the leaders of a relatively new field known as BioArt. Their careers and artistic development unfolded in Perth, Australia. Catts arrived there at the beginning of the 1990s, followed shortly afterward by Zurr. They worked at odd jobs and began studies at the University of Western Australia. Catts took product design and visual art; Zurr, photography and communications.

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"Our interest in BioArt started with a project I did in 1995 as part of a research study I had to do in product design," Catts relates. "I chose to integrate biotechnology and product design, with the aim of creating an environmentally-friendly design. At the time I thought, naively, that we had to change the conception of our consumer society to one that is more concerned about its products, instead of buying and throwing away. The idea was to use biological knowledge to create products of this kind."

At the time, the media was being inundated with descriptions of a mouse that had a large human ear transplanted on its back. This experiment was conducted in the laboratories of Joseph Vacanti and Robert Langer, the fathers of tissue engineering. They created a biodegradable polymeric scaffold in the shape and size of a human ear, and it was then seeded with human cells. The polymeric scaffold gradually degraded, while concurrently, the cells grew and multiplied upon it. The final result was an artificial ear composed entirely of human cells.

"For the public, this mouse symbolized the concept that it all had to do with genes, and that this was one of the dangers that lurk for us in human genetic engineering, which is a totally unfounded view," Catts says. "What we learned is that tissue engineering makes it possible to grow a tissue in three dimensions, not necessarily in connection with anything human. So why not grow products using this technology?"

Catts continues: "We found this subject problematic. For example, if we were to take a consumer product and wrap it in living tissue, would we consider it something living? This and other issues challenged us, and we decided to go on developing the research as art, because art has the advantage of addressing paradoxes in a way that is externalized, and not necessarily coming up with solutions. The most basic definition of art is the creation of objects whose mission is to challenge the viewer so he will reconsider his worldviews, and thus to forge a cultural discourse. We tried to see whether it is possible to create objects that are constructed of living materials and present them as artistic objects."

Technology-dependent

Zurr: "Art is not necessarily the creation of an object; it's enough to create a situation. At a certain level, we look at our works as performance art, in the sense that the process is more important than the finished product. The works change over time, and we document them. We are establishing the laboratory in the gallery itself, and the processes - the feeding ceremony and the ceremony of killing the cells - are carried out in front of an audience. Generally we invite the audience, the curator and the gallery owner to take part in killing the artistic object we created."

Catts: "Because we are utilizing tissue engineering, we can use relatively large objects in terms of cell tissues, whose average size is 4 to 5 centimeters and which can be seen with the naked eye. We are interested in people experiencing a semi-living object, and when they return to the exhibition, they will see that the object has changed. We remove the cells from an animal and 'persuade' them that the external conditions we provide them are their natural place and that they are in fact growing. We call the growing environment of the cells the techno-scientific body. At the metaphorical level, we are all living in a techno-scientific body, because we are technology-dependent organisms."

Zurr: "We define ourselves as artists, researchers and curators, in the sphere of art and biology, art and life, and art and new knowledge. Tension exists between art and science, because the conception is generally of one in the service of the other, and we want to get away from that dichotomy. From our point of view, this is art that deals with new concepts of life, some of which are emerging from new concepts of the life sciences."

Worry dolls

In 1999, Zurr and Catts exhibited "The Stone Age of Biology" at the Scitech Discovery Center in Perth. "Until then, we didn't believe that we could set up a functioning laboratory in a gallery," Zurr recalls. "From the Natural History Museum of Western Australia we received prehistoric stone utensils from Europe. Using computer technology, we miniaturized them to half a centimeter. From each utensil we created a small polymer scaffold, on which we grew muscle tissue, and we documented the process. Afterward we colored and photographed the miniaturized objects.

"The idea behind the exhibition was that, like our ancestors, who made use of the environment as raw material to forge tools, we are developing a new environment to forge other utensils. We are now effectively in the stone age of biology, because we are using living material as an element in the utensils themselves. Metaphorically, we are in a stage similar to that of our forebears, who discovered that it was possible to use the surroundings as a resource for their material."

In 2000, during a research year in Vacanti's laboratories at Harvard, they were invited to exhibit at an electronic arts festival. "We decided to do a project called 'Worry Dolls,'" Zurr relates. This Guatemalan tradition involves a box of six small dolls made of cloth. Children tell the dolls their worries before going to sleep, place the dolls under their pillow, and in the morning the worries have vanished. "We decided to grow seven worry dolls, because we have more than six worries. Each doll consists of living cells."

"During our work, Vacanti came into the lab and saw us working in a hood with tissue cultures," Catts says. "He was taken aback, because he thought that the breakthrough he had led in tissue engineering to replace defective body organs would inspire us to create objects using traditional techniques of the art of painting, sculpture, and so on. Suddenly he saw that we were working with the material itself. That slightly confused his terms about the essence of art."

Zurr: "In 2000, Joerg Haider and the extreme right entered the government in Austria. It was important for us to exhibit the worry dolls at that time and show that we were worried about this development. We gave each doll a category of worry, using the letters of the alphabet." These were:

A - Absolute. Worry about people who think they possess absolute truth.

B - Biotechnology. Worry about biotechnological developments.

C - Capitalism and consumerism.

D - Demagogy.

E - Eugenics.

F - Fear.

H - Hope.

"In that exhibition," Zurr continues, "we established a functioning lab in a gallery for the first time. In addition to the worry dolls, we installed a computer in which people wrote to the dolls about their worries. During the exhibition and afterward, we discovered that people had attributed supernatural powers to the dolls, and we emerged with a fascinating document that sets forth the apprehensions of the human race in the 21st century. We are looking for a sociologist to develop this document. All the material is on our Web site [www.tca.uwa.edu.au]."

On wings of pigs

The Welcome Trust investment fund, which was involved in the Human Genome Project, has a branch that supports artists who are engaged in a scientific field, and particularly the medical sciences. The trust also runs a gallery. As part of the celebrations marking the conclusion of the first draft of the Genome Project, in 2000, the trust's directors decided to hold an exhibition, and asked Zurr and Catts to take part.

"We didn't really think we were appropriate," Catts says, "because we don't deal with genetics, and from conversations with scientists we discovered that the scientific community was displeased with all this celebrating, which was intended mainly for public relations. We were also stunned by the type of attitude toward the Human Genome Project. There was a discourse of exaggerations about the scientific achievement. One of the declarations was, 'The impossible is now possible.' There is an expression in English, 'It will happen when pigs have wings' - and now the pigs had flown.

"We took that idea and decided to create pig wings, using our technology. First we tried to clarify what shape these wings would have. We looked at three aviation options - birds, bats and winged dinosaurs. We also wanted to address the historical iconography of wings in reference to the new knowledge. In mythology, demons have bat wings and angels have bird wings. Dinosaurs don't really have a mythology. We spent a great deal of time in the science museum at Harvard, copying the structure of the wings and the bones.

"With the computer, we developed a three-dimensional program for the wings, and used it to create degradable polymers. We seeded the polymers with bone marrow stem cells from a pig, which would multiply and create the wings. We grew the cells for nine months in special bioreactors and succeeded in bringing about a total substitution between the polymer and the marrow. We offered this work to the exhibition, but were turned down. Apparently, they were offended. One of the reasons was that, in their view, we did not actually reflect public opinion regarding the Human Genome Project, nor is this something that can be requested of artists.

"We sent them a letter of 'apology' for not exhibiting what they thought public opinion should be, and they replied that they did not like our work. The exchange of letters was an integral part of the project. In the meantime, they mounted the exhibition without our work, and we were astounded to discover, in the curator's statement, that none of the artists they had approached had proposed anything problematic. That was very strange, in contrast to the exchange of correspondence, which was posted on our Web site. They found out about this and approached the university's legal adviser and threatened to sue us for libel. After that, the university asked us to remove the letters from the Web site.

"We replaced that page with one on which we mentioned only that we had received threats. But subsequently, the Welcome Trust threatened that if we did not remove this page, they would stop supporting research at the university. So we were compelled to remove the page for good. From our point o f view, this proved that our artistic independence was intact. We think that the use of art by organizations to promote an agenda is dangerous, that a critical approach needs to be maintained when engaged in art and science, and that it is necessary to examine the agenda of the artist or of the body that supports him."

The self-created steak

Another project Catts and Zurr exhibited was called "Disembodied Cuisine." "It all started at Harvard," Catts relates. "There was a scientist there who was working on tissue engineering in the womb. She removed muscle tissues from the fetus of a sheep, manipulated them, and returned them to the womb with the aim of seeing whether the manipulations would be manifested in the newborn. The muscle tissues multiplied like crazy in the lab and filled all the incubators. Rather than throw out the cells, the scientist offered them to staff of the lab for use.

"It reminded us of what our parents used to tell us, 'You don't throw away food.' We were hungry artists in Boston, and thought of food went to our head. We asked ourselves, 'Why not grow food from these muscle tissues without killing an animal?' The truth is that hypocrisy underlies this declaration, because we know that the serum that serves as food for cells that are growing and multiplying comes from animal matter, and to obtain it, it is necessary to kill lambs. The irony is that the technology distances the victim.

"In the lab, we grew lamb muscle cells on degradable polymers, and we obtained a steak the size of a 10-shekel coin. After three months of growth, the polymers disappeared completely, but the problem was that we couldn't eat the small steak, because the lab didn't have a license to serve food.

"In 2000, we were the first to grow food from tissue cultures. In 2003, we were invited to a major exhibition which focused on art and biotechnology in Nantes, France. There we set up a laboratory of tissue cultures using completely new equipment, with no fear of infection. We decided to make steaks out of the most repulsive meat, and to that end used frog cells. Later, we decided to make things even more repulsive, and because we knew that the French loathe engineered food, we decided to use engineered muscle cells of frogs.

"From a French researcher we obtained a biopsy of engineered muscle cells from the legs of a frog. We built the laboratory and for two months we fed the steaks. Every day we had a ceremony of feeding the steaks. On the last day we held a big meal with the participation of eight volunteers, in which the steak was eaten. The thing is that we ate our art, which is the most interactive thing imaginable.

"We removed the steak (which was, as described, the size of a coin) from the bioreactor in which it was growing, marinated it in Calvados overnight, and cooked it in gravy that included garlic and honey. It was the ultimate nouvelle cuisine. However, the steak was not really tasty, and four people spit it out. What happened was that the polymers did not completely degrade, and because the muscle cells had not 'exercised,' they were like jelly. We quickly collected what people spat out and we are now exhibiting it in an exhibition on leftovers in disembodied cuisine. At the same time, we documented the entire process and created a video installation on three screens that tells the story of the project."

Catts: "Not long afterward, a young scientist started to send us questions about the project, which for us was very good, because it made it possible for us to draw conclusions. We discovered that a gram of steak cost us $650, and when we calculated how much serum we had used to grow the steak, it turned out that a whole lamb would have needed to be killed for this. In other words, there are no free meals and there is no victimless situation.

"The scientist who approached us wrote a long article in a respected scientific journal about the use of tissue engineering technology to grow meat substitutes, and he gave us credit. Effectively, he treated us like scientists, not artists. The story was published worldwide. Subsequently he established, in partnership with the University of Maryland, a company called New Harvest, and the government of Holland invested 5 million euros in a similar study. This was a very interesting development, in that artists who are engaged in a subject conceptually are suddenly showing the way. That is not what we intended, but that is what happened."

Zurr: "At that time we received an e-mail from People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, a very militant American animal-welfare organization. The organization's leader had a project proposal: that we should take a biopsy from her and grow from her tissue a steak that she would eat. The idea was to protest the eating of animals, but this would be an act of cannibalism, which we did not like, and we refused."

The ethical price

Catts and Zurr are preoccupied with the ethical paradox that underlies their work. "At the abstract level, technology, particularly of the Western variety, deprives us of the possibility to make ethical decisions about how we conduct our lives, because the victims are so remote that they become transparent," Catts says. "It starts with buying meat in the supermarket and proceeds to advanced war technologies. In both those cases, you don't see the victim. There is something inbuilt in the conception of Western consumerism and progress to make it possible for us not to know the price the Other pays for our way of life. This subject interests us very much, because we, too, are taking part in the representation of this false utopia.

"I gave a talk at the Tate Modern in London about our work, and an art critic said he was shocked that we were capable of treating life like that. This man was wearing a full-figure leather suit. Before replying, I said to him, 'I have a problem with your clothing. At least one cow had to be slaughtered for it.' People were certain I had paid him to do it. For him, that element was so transparent that he never gave it any thought."

Zurr: "On the other hand, we were in Spain and we saw that the entire Spanish society had become more American. Opposition to bullfighting had intensified, but they are eating more at McDonald's. In the wake of our work, Oron became a vegetarian, but, as he says, with conscious hypocrisy. He eats only cold-blooded creatures."

Catts: "There are a great many people who are self-righteous, and moralize to others. We are conducting our lives with conscious hypocrisy; the self-righteous do the opposite. We present our works directly, so they will not preach. Our message is far more implicit - we do not provide answers. I think art loses its force when it moralizes or becomes self-righteous.

"The important thing for us is to bring about a situation in which those who are exposed to our work will be challenged in regard to their concept of life, and will then think about how to cope with that. All we want to tell the viewers is that the time has come to cope with it.

"One thing we discovered at a very early stage is that when you exhibit your art, it takes on a life of its own. The artist wants to say something specific, but in many cases your art is interpreted differently. So it is not worthwhile to present the message. One thing artists have to learn early in their career is that once work is sent into the world, it is no longer theirs. Many people see our work as problematic - and then we know the work has accomplished what we wanted."

SymbioticA

Catts and Zurr are artists in residence at the School of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia in Perth, where they have established a laboratory that fuses art and science, called "SymbioticA." They started with a small grant, to which, in time, were added grants from artistic bodies in Australia.

"We were invited to Harvard and other universities to lecture, which led to the recognition by a number of scientists in the school that the relations between science and art had to be consolidated within the framework of the university," Zurr relates. "At the same time, artists contacted us to ask if they could come to work with us. We decided to submit a request to the local lottery to build a studio for research artists in a building of the anatomy department. To our surprise, we got the money, and suddenly we had our own space. Slowly, we developed a residency program in which artists can do research, an academic program, workshops, and all kinds of things that made it possible for us to subsist."

The program got underway toward the end of 2002, and artists and scientists from a broad range of disciplines are doing research in the art-science laboratories at the university. "The mandate we received from the university is to coordinate art and science," Zurr continues. "The artists work alongside scientists. All the artistic research must go through the safety and ethics commissions, like any other research. Oron lectures and manages the workshops, and I am doing a Ph.D. and am responsible for the academic organization of the project. Five to ten researchers have been coming to us every year for the past seven years. They work with DNA, with tissue cultures and other items.

"In some way, we have become an entry gate for artists and intellectuals who cannot do research like this elsewhere. After they acquire working skills here, they are able to go back to their universities, enter labs, and do research. They have the beginnings of a language. Recently we got a call from Stanford University. They found our model to be ideal, and we now intend to form a partnership with them. True, we are very occupied with management, but the system is slowly arriving at a stage in which it nourishes itself. One of our remaining ambitions is to make it possible for scientists to do research in symbiotics, research that is based on sheer curiosity. It is important for us to have scientists come and do research in an artistic laboratory."W