willil8+comments+week+9+Landecker+culturing+life

http://www.listentofeist.com/

Ok, I was still reading this book and I decided to put on a CD my sister made for me...long story short - have you ever heard of Feist? Indie-rocker turned pop artist on the VH1 countdown?

Anyway, her video for the song "One Two Three Four" reminds me very much of chapter 2 of Landecker's Culturing Life. Landecker discusses that mortality is an "operational concept". And indeed, as proven by the 30 year life of a chicken heart under the care of Carrel and various tissue culture technicians, life became "a set of specific technical interventions in physical mater that resulted in a material form for this concept of biological infinitude."1

So how does this relate to "One Two Three Four"? The human-made patterns of the musical-styled music video reminds me of cell-division. It starts with the embedding of Feist in a sterile environment - she appears to enter through a very small space into the center of the "Carrel flask". There is a subsequent exuberant growth of humanity which is differentiated by clothing color (instead of cell type)2 and a steady (but motile) response to feeding by light and air. At the end of the video, the other human 'cells' quickly disappear behind Feist's advancing form simulating the suction removal of Feist-as-starter from this Carrel flask, implying a definite immortality….one could so easily loop this video forever.

Note: 1 Landecker, Hannah. Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 2007. p.70

2 The "thrift-shop" clothes used in the video also reminds me that the old can be reintroduced as something new, just as technicians take parts of a tissue culture to start another culture. PARELES, JON "Just Feist. Just Wait." New York Times 15 Apr 2007. Online. Internet. 31 Oct 2007. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/arts/music/15pare.html