How’s your immune system, in pretty good shape? Been a while since your last cold? Well, how would you feel about pitting your immune system against someone else’s in a bloody death match? Improbable as it sounds, that’s the basis for an art project called Blood Wars from Kathy High, which pits different individual’s white blood cells against one another. Rather than a boxing ring or Colosseum, this skirmish takes place in the theater of the Petri dish, as samples are extracted from willing participants and then battle commences with a series of knockout rounds until the winner is declared.The tournament to find the strongest blood began in Australia last August and then pitched up in Dublin, Ireland at the Visceral exhibition at the Science Gallery. In addition to being a crowdsourced performance piece and a cellular version of a gladiatorial battle, it’s also a scientific experiment:While looking into the processes of immune cell engagement, cell staining, time-lapse microscopy and laboratory protocol, Blood Wars proposes a unique platform for the understanding of the physiological functioning of the circulatory and immune systems, in states of both health and disease.You can learn more about it by watching the short video above and visiting their website.Using bodily fluids in art work is a tried and tested way to raise a few eyebrows and garner attention, depending on how unsavory it is. But not wanting to put anyone off their lunch we’ll move onto another artist who famously used blood in their work, Brit artist Marc Quinn in his signature piece Self (1991). It’s a frozen sculpture of his head made from 4.5 litres (9 pints) of his own blood which he regenerates every five years. Its current incarnation (below) from 2006 appropriately resides at the National Portrait Gallery in London.© Marc Quinn; photograph: Todd-White Art Photography; Courtesy Jay Jopling/ White Cube (London)
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