Borders & Identity: A Discourse on Selected Works by Heath Bunting

Anna Blount

4/12/2003

Despite the popular believe in the openness of the web, the Internet is not a freely accessible place.  Lisa Jevbratt's [every: access] beautifully demonstrates this point.  186,000 ISPs are represented in a spectrum of colour.  Clicking on different pixels brings up a window that usually denies you access to that server.  Governments and corporations are definitively barricading more and more information.

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's controversial president, has claimed modern technologies such as the internet are used to commit espionage against the Third World and are the face of 'a dangerous imperial world order led by warrior states and kingdoms.'  However, this is from the man who forced his nation's largest independent newspaper to close in September.  Even increasingly isolated and impoverished states are attempting to control information and ISP's both within and beyond their borders.   

Nations can, and have, forced ISP's to block particular sites and can harass, jail or even kill those who don't comply.  Servers, buildings and software can be attacked, as they were in Yugoslavia when the government decided to suppress dissident views during the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts.  Also, the Indonesian government was implicated in a successful hacker-like attack on an Irish ISP that hosted web sites dealing with the suppression of East Timor.

This is not to say that the internet has not assisted the liberal cause.  Just one example is the Zapatista rebels in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.  This highly democratic indigenous movement has received little attention from the mainstream press, but has sustained high levels of internet interest.  Due to the immediate dissemination through the net of events such as massacres of indigenous peoples in Chiapas, the Mexican government has been unable to launch a full assault on these persistent rebels.  As a rather painful aside, the World Bank has urged the Mexican military to launch such an attack.  (If you are interested in more information about the Zapatista Movement, http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/zapatista.html is a good place to start.)  So the internet does have the amazing capacity to breathe new life into movements by demonstrating the inter-relatedness of many such issues, but the other side of that coin is the conservative, selected power of governments intent on asserting their control.

In addition, corporations now regularly monitor the net and use counter-propaganda and legal actions to protect their brands.  The internet is an intellectual battlefield populated by governments, corporations, activists and artists.  This is why an artist / activist such as Heath Bunting is so painfully relevant.

HEATH BUNTING

Heath Bunting was born in 1966 and is an English citizen.  His official biography begins with him 'emerging from the 80's.'  Although certain events such as his wedding are documented, he does not provide many personal details.  For example, on the Identity Swap Database he does not provide his credit history, criminal record or distinguishing characteristics, leaving these fields blank.  Also, although he provides copious documentation and details of his arrest for possessing a knife, we are not told the outcome.

Bunting and Rachel Baker began irational.org to host subversive web sites, including their own.  His work is highly economical, aesthetically opposed to the glossy exuberance of commercial sites.  Minimalism of style conveys concepts that are both significant and, at times, ironically amusing.

IDENTITY SWAP DATABASE

The Identity Swap Database was commissioned by the Fundacion Telefonica, and was intended as a 'work that attempts to establish connections, gateways between cyberspace and the street.'  

Responding to the online creation of fictitious personas, this site sought to use the net as a way for users to exchange identities for the purpose of nation boundary crossings.  It reflects the idea that a piece of paper, no matter who authorized it, does not create our identity.  Neither does the accident of our birth in a particular country.  This project proposal calls for 'creating a place of loan and exchange of identities to expedite border crossing for all those whose identity is borrowed.'

So, are you looking for a passport?  Simply enter a few basic characteristics onto the online form, such as eye, hair and skin colour, native language and height and weight.  The search comes back with many potential choices, ranked by percentage of appropriateness to you.  Here are a few examples.

Irisann6996@aol.com is an American with brown hair and blue eyes.  Her credit rating is not very good and she has a couple of tattoos.  Also, she only wants a temporary exchange.

E@mail.com is a Canadian with freckles (and a very dramatic photo), whose good credit rating comes with brown hair and brown eyes.  He is seeking a permanent arrangement.

Many nationalities are represented on the database.  Minjung@minjung.com is Korean with brown hair and eyes.  Only providing a temporary loan, she has some debt and a tattoo on her lower back.  

If you want one of these passports, you simply email the desired lender directly and arrange the exchange amongst yourselves.  When asked if this service has been used, Bunting stated, 'It is hard to say as the project is designed to restrict monitoring.  I suspect not though.  It was originally written for an activist group but they never actually promoted or used it except for presentations.' Also, no one has requested the use of his passport yet.

BORDERXING

Next is the infamous borderXing Guide, co-authored by Kayle Brandon.  Commissioned by the Tate and the Musee d'Art Modern in Luxembourg, both institutions paid 4,000GBP and are contractually obligated to support the site for 5 years.  After that point, they have the option of extending it without paying the artist any additional fee.  The artists' personal fee was only 2,000GBP.  

The concept was 'to create and publish a guide to crossing European national borders without paper authorisations,' such a passport or visa.  The borderXing guide 'will give example routes, descriptions of equipment required and fully explain techniques used to cross without detection.'

So why did Bunting embark upon this project?  'Legislation, such as the Football Supporters Act, can be sued to prevent free travel.  This will soon be extended to activists.  This piece will be a protest against this, and will also provide concrete information for those wishing to travel that could not otherwise.'

If you go to the borderXing site from your home computer, you will be immediately directed to a denial page that lists in detail where the site is available.  A large numbers of countries are authorized, but if you ae not in one of those countries you need to find the nearest static social host to you in order to access the work.  You are forced to contend with his boundaries, and physically relocate in order to gain access to this part of the net.

Looking at the list of countries included, I began to wonder what determined inclusion or exclusion.  As none of the sources available had really delved into the matter, I decided to compare the list to different criteria.  

I found that 14 of the top 25 Gross Domestic Product countries have access to borderXing, including China, Japan, India, Russia and South Korea.  5 of the top 25 Gross Domestic Product Per Capita countries have access, including Bermuda, Japan and San Marino.  

Thinking it was perhaps an idea of Western exclusion, I compared the list to the EU membership roll and found three of the full members have access: Portugal, Greece and Finland.  All the new EU members have access except for Malta and all of the applicant nations are permitted to visit the project.  Then I turned to those within NATO, and found that 6 of the 19 are allowed into the website.  

Concerned I was stuck in a monetary or political paradigm, I compared the list to countries facing serious human rights grievances and found most were given access, including Rwanda, Uzbekistan and China.

So who isn't allowed?  The majority of western Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia are the biggest exceptions.  The latter is a bit more perplexing since New Zealand was granted access.  

In order to clarify the framework that determined inclusion and exclusion, I emailed Heath Bunting and he replied,  'Countries which are normally difficult to enter get blocked apart from specifically listed locations, countries which are more welcoming get free access.  It's a simple ironic reversal.'  

However, I do not believe it is that simple.  Western culture has systematically excluded the vast majority of the world for many centuries, offering a partial inclusion only to those who abandon their own cultural heritage in the process of acceptance.  I believe this is Bunting's way to flip the coin, for reasons far more profound than ease of entry.  Almost the entire planet is welcomed, except for the Western powers.  That the colonies or territories of excluded nations are granted access is telling.

I also asked if any providers from the countries granted access had blocked his site.  His response was, 'Not that I know of-it has provoked very little reaction from authority.  I did get a strange email the other day which I suspect came from some kind of security agency probing for more information.'

His next comments were fascinating and completely unexpected.  'Most reaction came from activists who accused me of exploiting asylum seekers.  I try to raise questions in the minds of all parties.'

Decide for yourself.  Currently there are 13 places in London granted access to the site, including the British Council, British Film Institute, ICA and the Tate.

BOTANICAL GUIDE TO BORDERXING

2003's Botanical Guide to borderXing is intended for 'all those who would like to become acquainted with wild plants and borderXing' and, unlike borderXing, it is an open access site.

It includes helpful plant characteristics and 'strategy in a broad range of crossing conditions.'  Also, it is designed so it can be easily folded into a conveniently sized pamphlet once printed.

I'll use the mouse-ear hawkweed as an example.  Bunting describes it as a 'solitary yellow dandelion flower,' providing its growing cycle and where it is likely to be found.  

Literally in the midst of this botanical exploration Bunting offers pieces of advice taken from the borderXing pages, such as, 'Travel light,' and 'Passing an active rail tunnel on foot requires careful observation of traffic for safe passage.  The note, consisting of the last sentence of the last full paragraph, states: 'For the sake of elite power, human movement is restricted and information and money mobilized.' This site is a teaser for the borderXing guide, a witty and subversive way to innocuously impart information to those who might need or want it.

LIMITATIONS OF THE MEDIUM

Bunting himself sees an inherent problem with the medium of the internet.  'As with all these projects the software is the easy part.  They don't actually come to life unless they are managed, and promoted well.  I am at the stage now where I have too many projects to actually manage.'

'So they either don't work or I have to find other people to take them on.  Most people would prefer to create and manage their own projects though.  So many of my projects remain as proposals or non-functioning follies.  This is a serious flaw of the art process which I am still trying to fix.'

CONCLUSIONS

Even if a lack of managing and promotion makes them, in Bunting's terms, 'proposals' and 'follies,' the three works discussed are stunningly effective prototypes, powerful both as conceptual and net art.  Word of mouth precedes them, and they are available for us to visit, to provoke questions about boundaries and what instances of official sanction are within our personal identities.

Concepts of border, identity, inclusion and exclusion and the overlapping realms of the net and physical reality are powerful forces referenced in these projects. These are works of both an activist and an artist, and are an intelligent and proactive response to the growing institutionalisation taking place on the internet, and an open acknowledgement of the political sphere that is the net.

Heath Bunting's work is witty, insightful, challenging and very necessary in these times.   I only hope his future projects have a broad enough platform to fuel and provoke the discussions on these intrinsic themes that need to be taken further in all pathways of the so-called 'information highway.'