Possible Bodies

Kiss cut and the sensing knife

Item number: 116
Item title: Kiss cut and the sensing knife
Author(s) of the item: Matters of Activity and Larissa Lai
Entry of the item into the inventory: 13 July 2020
Cluster(s) the item belongs to: Segmentation
Inventor(s) for this item: Antye Guenther, Possible Bodies

on sensitive cutting 1:

"Grandma Chan Ling invented the partho pop, you know, how we egg ourselves along—I mean, the long, lizardy love of the Grist sisters. We split, we slit, we heal, we groom, self-mutated beyond the know-how of the clone company Jemini that spawned us, and the HöST scale and microchip factories that bought our grannies to work for them. But there are flaws in our limited DNA — the DNA of just one woman. We mutate for better and worse, for sickness and health. But more for sickness and worse. Only our starfish can save us, by regrowing whatever grooms like me cut out of them. Grandma Chan Ling invented the kiss cut, the repair job — what do you say? The fix, the patch. The first starfish gave her liver, her kidneys, and, at last, her red-hot heart to the first doubler. And so it was, in the beginning."

From: Larissa Lai, Tiger Flu (2019)

on sensitive cutting 2:

"Cutting is one of the oldest cultural practices. It is a fundamental way for human beings to enter into correspondence with materials. With these specific gestures and tools, people alter and reshape material boundaries and intertwine different entities. Those activities span across wide forms of tacit knowledge, from ancient craftsmanship to current high-tech procedures."

"We imagine developing methods and tools to intervene at molecular and cellular scales that would simultaneously operate as a swarm of micro-sensing knives."

From Matters of Activity: https://www.matters-of-activity.de/en/posts/2030/?preview

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