Design Federation

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.

Catts and Zurr run a laboratory at the University of Western Australia in Perth; this combines artistic practice with scientific research. The jacket is one of several works created as part of their Tissue Culture & Art Project. Speaking to The Art Newspaper for a televised interview, Paola Antonelli, head of MoMA’s architecture and design department and curator of the show, says she had to make the decision to turn off the life-support system for the work, basically “killing” it.

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