Timothy Druckrey on Sun, 21 Dec 1997 20:37:18 +0100 (MET) |
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<nettime> Heath Bunting: Wired or Tired? |
Heath Bunting: Wired or Tired? In the December issue of Wired magazine we find amidst the pre Christmas consumer spectacle of seductive scanners, professional sports watches, expensive liquors and scantily clad savvy female computer nerds, a seductive spectacle of another shape. The current offering is a glossy close up of the smirking bearded face of Heath Bunting, net.artist from London, and one of the founders of the international net.art movement. Bunting is best known amongst the digiratti for his intended subversive actions and attacks on corporate and consumer culture. Attacking professionalism of all kinds, he was quickly scooped up by the very professional Catherine David for last summer's Documenta X, the prestigious international art exhibition in Kassel, Germany. In a manner astonishingly akin to Documenta X, with its redundant revisits to 70s conceptual art, Bunting's naive stance revealed his ignorance of hard lessons learned 20 years ago by less inexcusably innocent precursors. Had he been paying attention, he could have learned sooner that there is no outside in corporate consumer culture or more importantly, that "outside" is just another target market. Well this December, dec97@irational.org has apparently learned with a vengeance; He has recently accepted a paid position as Senior Computer Artist at the Banff Centre, in Canada. The logical next step, geographically and ideologically, will be Senior computer consultant at Microsoft. >From the pages of Wired Magazine, we gaze at Bunting's face, a tastefully consumable icon floating against a white background. As Artist of the Hour, he appears ironic, cool and rebellious, gazing at the reader knowingly, eyes narrowed, lips pursed - as if to suggest that his subversion could somehow transcend the lifestyles magazine he is now decorating. But what exactly is being subverted, or more precisely, what are we being sold? In Wired Magazine, the hot new item of consumption these days is the subversive artist. Hot Wired and Wired have taken on the badly needed position in the US as patrons of the digital arts. They have been more friendly and inviting to digital arts than the art world ever has been. In ArtForum, for example, as the token digital critic I am occasionally offered a column, always already scripted within the margins, of the magazine and of the art world. There has been much theorizing of the relationship of the margins to the center particularly from the net as a marginal, suburban strip mall, in relation to the art world's urban center market place. Yet much of this theorizing comes from a passive relationship to the digital media upon which the theorists and artists are commenting. This was not the case previously with Bunting, although with this latest transgression, or rather absorption, we see how quickly one can be seduced to the sell out. Demo or die! Wired, unscrupulous entrepreneurs that they are, have taken to heart their forefather lessons, Phillip Morris and Saatchi and Saatchi, to name only two of the most licentious. They fully understand just how useful a public relations device the arts can be. Bunting, "Sage of Subversion," we are instructed with no apparent tongue in cheek, is "fucking with commodities." Easier said than done, coming from a magazine that has already taken home the prize for glorifying the wild wild west of free market computer economics. Cool and radical in its approach to consumption, why not invite Bunting to play act two to patron saint Marshall McLuhan: another clever Commonwealth citizen with a palpable sound bite? No less ludicrous is the additional label Wired ascribes to Bunting, "Michelangelo of the Digital age." In an age of post-mechanical simulation, the notion of the hand in art is no longer nostalgic, it is positively reactionary. To proclaim the possibility of a masterly mark of the digital age is a suggestion seeping with egotism and nostalgia for masterpieces whose poverty have been unmasked ever since that fateful day in 1917 when the patron saint of contemporary art signed a mass produced urinal. The cultural loop - from subversion to assimilation to absorption - revisits net art quicker, smoother and more quietly than ever before. The ride begins with net production and distribution and ends as hard copy pages spouting computer consumption and techno-utopianism. Bunting becomes a complicit pawn in Wired magazine's naughty boy game of -ever so gently -slapping the hand that feeds it. And finally we must ask the sad but obvious question. What is Bunting subverting? The answer is perhaps the greatest irony of all. He is, we are informed by Wired, "wreaking havoc on corporate Web sites" and "overturning capitalistic ideals." Anyone searching for Adidas and Nike is given a pointer to the competitors site. So in essence, Buntings "subversion" is to participate in free market economics, in ending monopolies and giving business to the competitors. Capitalism 101 anyone? Cheques for tuition may be sent via http://www.irational.org/skint Timothy Druckrey <druckrey@interport.net> --- # distributed via nettime-l : no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a closed moderated mailinglist for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@icf.de and "info nettime" in the msg body # URL: http://www.desk.nl/~nettime/ contact: nettime-owner@icf.de