I’ve been following Orkan Telhan’s projects for quite a while, he is a well-known professor here at the Weitzman School of Design in Penn, known for combining biology and art in very interesting ways. Recently in a Fine Arts newsletter, one of his projects was linked: the Ouroboros Steak.
Ouroboros, funnily enough, is a myth about a giant snake eating its own tail. In a similar fashion, this art piece consists of a kit to harvest your own cells and grow them into a steak you can consume. The steaks in the image above, in particular, were made from cheek cells and some blood that was about to be discarded in a blood bank.
This art piece has recently sparked a lot of controversy in the media, and justly so as I can see it could be something out of a horror movie. Telhan’s intent, however, was to make a satirical statement on current food tecchnologies.
Telhan says it is a “critique of the current food technologies, especially the lab-grown meat industry, which promises a lot of hope about the future of making meat or protein sources without killing any animals.”
“We just wanted to provoke the conversation a little bit by saying that actually growing human cells from waste, human blood, is actually more sustainable” than current lab-grown meat production.” Telhan said. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
“That’s obviously triggered the controversy because it’s such a taboo concept to think about humans being consumed by themselves,” Telhan stated. “[the art piece is] is a critique of human behavior as opposed to saying that here’s another solution for your protein sources.” (Philadelphia Inquirer)
You can learn some more about this project in the Ouroboros Steak website or its Instagram. What are your thoughts on this art piece?
