14 DAY TRIAL // Here's a thought to keep you busy for a while, especially those of you who are rather “green”-oriented: what if there was no more need to kill animals in order to wear real leather clothes? No, I'm not talking about synthetic leather that looks so good as if it was real. Instead, what if your clothes were alive, up to some degree? Would that be scary or eventually acceptable, given the mass animal slaughter alternative? OK, before you start thinking about that, it's the fever in me speaking, here's what it's all about.
There's this group of experts (Oran Catts, Ionat Zurr and Guy Ben-Ary) from the University of Western Australia's School of Anatomy and Human Biology who managed to “grow” a small coat that could be used to dress a hamster. The small piece of cloth was kept alive by laboratory means, for artistic purposes, as its creators claim. It was called the Victimless Leather, and developed onto a polymer base, covered with living cells, and shaped in a one piece coat-ish form.
The researchers state that the result of their efforts should be perceived as an “art form to illuminate our human conduct with other living systems,” and that “… by deconstructing our cultural meaning of clothes as a second skin through art, we raise questions about our exploitation of other living beings”. The main purpose of the project, though, was to encourage thought and conversation, as well as obtaining genuine leather without affecting animals in any negative way.
But the way this process of creating organic living tissues as a novel form of art will actually be comprehended is up to anyone's guess. Most likely, the vast majority will think of this as horrible, like something rather inspired by horror movie scenarios, and I can bet that the first one to come to mind is “The Silence of the Lambs”.