Abstract

The invention of the concept of bio-power by Foucault opens a space for thinking about the contemporary articulation of biology, the diffuse forms of power or control, as well as the construction of subjectivities. The work of the bio-artist, far from being merely a denunciation of the societies of control or an utopia of an “augmented man”, reveals the ambivalence of biotechnologies, in the mode of “pharmakon” : at the same time, both “remedy” and “poison”. Contradictorily, biomachines allow both an increase in the power to act and plasticity, but also, simultaneously, a recolonization of lives, even by the normativity of performance and growth. Is this then a will to power and a wish to improve living conditions, in the wake of the ideologies of progress, or rather a desire to finish, the “tiredness of being oneself”?