Bio-engineered Living Entities in Art: Aliveness, Duration, and Movement in Bricolage

Bricolage created by Nathan Thompson, Guy Ben-Ary and Sebastian Diecke, is a kinetic biological artwork first exhibited at the Perth International Arts Festival in 2020. The artists used stem cell technologies to create bio-engineered living entities from donated human heart muscle cells. These living entities were suspended in an incubator from the ceiling, and made viewable to gallery-goers, who watched the performance of cells generating and moving independently. This paper considers how the assemblage, animation and performance of cells embedded in Bricolage highlights questions around the conceptualisations and perceptions of life, duration, animation and ‘aliveness’.