1 The Semi-Living as Agents of Irony

This is an examination of the performative aspects of the Semi-Living (and objects of Partial Live) grown by the Tissue Culture & Art Project (TC&A). The Tissue Culture & Art Project, among a growing number of artists and collectives are involved with the presentation of manipulated living systems in an artistic context. In contrast with art that deals with the representation of life through established artistic strategies, TC&A‟s type of engagement with living systems generate an experience which is closer to live/performance art. The phenomenological experience of the audience (as well as the artists) is of major importance for the TC&A. In much of TC&A‟s work the audience are „forced ‟ to actively participate in or be implicated with the alteration of the life cycle of problematised, technologically dependent fragments of life. As part of the TC&A we look at Semi Live Art (where humans and Semi-Living are unequally collaborating) as an attempt to challenge people‟s perceptions of life. Like performance or live art, TC&A is interested in the presentation of the subject rather then its representation. The audience is confronted by the existence of the Semi-Living through the different performative and aesthetic strategies of TC&A, but first and foremost by the fact that Semi-Living are sharing the time and space of the engaged audience. By presenting something that is „sort of alive‟, that could only exist because of us and is dependent on us, TC&A lay bare the hypocrisies created to deal with the paradoxes in human relationships with other living beings.