REVIEWS BY STUDENTS: Bunting

Traspasser Allowed: Heath Bunting irational.org/heathbunting
http://irational.org/cgi-bin/cv2/temp.pl
by María Cano Chanez, Omar Echeverría Soza and José Raúl Sánchez Torres

Irational.org is a web page that of artists in which each one of them briefly resumes his/her biography and the work they have done. All the works on display have some relationship with problems of identity and privacy on the Web. All this kind of work has been inserted into what could be labeled as hacktivism. Within this page you will be able to find the work of the artist, Heath Bunting, who we decided to talk about. However, we had to make a choice of two pieces to analyze as he had a very long list of all the works he has done. The two proposals that were selected are Bordexing and The Status Project. In order to follow a chronological sequence we will begin by explaining the Bordexing Project. It began in 2001 and was terminated in 2011. The proposition of Boderxing is to make a detailed description of the illegal crossing of European borders. Alongside the description, people should take accurate photos of them crossing undetected. These pictures would be uploaded with the exact instructions for crossing that border, so that everyone had access to this information. The purpose of these actions is to transgress the limits that political systems have decided to create. The second project is The Status Project, which began in 2004 and ended in 2014.  It consisted in making  a mapping of the mobilizations that run on databases. This is made, through the data that people are forced to provide to both, government and private institutions to obtain services. The maps will be created of the mutations and movements made with this information by the users. Besides understanding how the user´s information moves and mutates, you could understand the mobilisation from the system itself. After being able to infer how the system operates by looking at the maps, the person will have the possibility of using other identities within the same system. Being able to decode the way the system moves, makes the users able to break the system and create another identity.  The reason for doing this is so people would not be limited to only one identity established by the system, because no one can be defined by just throwing some data.

In our opinion, the importance of the Bunting´s project is that even though you are creating a utopian illusion, it produces consciousness in people, to open their eyes to what is happening. Probably you can´t break the system entirely, however you can activate and set new rules of openness for free expression and privacy online. According to José Luis Brea, Bunting is completely immersed in the role of the activist as he produces “the fantasy of a specific potential ’resistance’ against the ’system’.” Both, Bordexing and the Status Proyect, have gotten people engaged electronically in breaking institutional establishments. It has created a community that is appalled by the way the system merely objectifies people by transforming them into measurable targets. The Net is intended to be a place of free passage or to put it in terms of Hakim Bey, an autonomous place. The system will find a way to legalize this temporary autonomous place, but the importance of this kind of work is that people find another way to crack the system to have a free passage and freedom, not only electronically speaking, but also physically.