Hair in Vitro by Polona Tratnik is a part of a several-year long transdisciplinary research project in which a team of collaborators grows hair in vitro. After obtaining a human tissue sample, they conduct a series of experiments with the hair follicle, achieving the longest possible lifespan of hair in a controlled environment, separated from the body.
The project is rhizomatically structured on several levels and combines technoscience with different artistic strategies and socio-scientific research of tissue engineering and immunology as particularly topical areas of biotechnology from the social point of view. This combination promises revolutionary consequences especially in medicine and aesthetic surgery as well as a reflection on the hybridisation of art, social sciences and technoscience, the latter becoming more and more important over the past few years.
Polona Tratnik has a PhD in philosophy and theory of visual culture, a Master of Arts and a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts. She is an Assistant Professor for the subject of Philosophy of Culture at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Primorska, a Research Associate at the Science and Research Centre, and she also worked as a Fulbright researcher and a Professor at the University of California Santa Cruz in 2012. Polona Tratnik is an active cultural worker: a pioneer in bio-art, a curator, a cultural event organiser, the art director of the Break 2.3 New Species multimedia festival, a critic, an editor, etc. She is also the President of the Slovene Society of Aesthetics and the Director of the Horizonti Institute, an institute for culture, science and education.
A lecture on the project will be given by Ajda Marič.