Hold Me in Your Biomechanical Arms

Years before N.Katherine Hayles wrote "How We Became Posthuman", and closer to the period in which Haraway was working on her famous "Cyborg Manifesto", conceptual artist Laurie Anderson was already telegraphing the articulation of biotechnology with military and industrial research.She is almost unique among musicians in recognising the significance of these relationships. While obviously critical of how these developments had the potential to spill over into (techno) primitive wars of accumulation, (Norbert Wiener, a founding "father" of autopoiesis, also acknowledged this fact), Anderson has never surrendered to one-dimensional pessimism. Witness her rationale for observing the system from the inside, during her most recent stint as the first ever artist in residence at NASA.