INTERVIEW MET HEATH BUNTING


Could you describe where you come from and how you first got involved in
doing artistic things?

I was born in London, I moved to Newtown when I was six. It was like the
set of Clockwork Orange, a violent utopian town. I escaped there when I was
about seventeen and went to Bristol. That was my first proper city and
there I discovered all sorts of things, including art. I did a three years
apprenticeship making stained glass windows for churches there. So I guess
that was my first standard creative practice. When I was a kid I used to
make things out of electronics. I guess that was a precursor to my artistic
practice now.


It seems that you come from a squatters background, or something similar,
is that right?

Yeah, I grew up during Margaret Thatcher's reign and the general attitude
towards young people then was of contempt. Especially towards any kind of
social movement. I was part of general situation or group called the jilted
generation. Basically we felt abandoned and also aggressed. The police was
definitely out to destroy anything we did. There was hostility towards
young people. From that grew the rave scene, a party scene in the UK, which
was a very politicized scene. I was a little bit involved in that and, yes,
I've lived in squats. But generally, if you were not working as a stock
broker, as a young person you were somehow seen as the enemy within, and
likely to get harrassed by all sorts of people, all sorts of petty fascists
including ticket collectors on trains. For instance, I used to get thrown
off trains, even when I had a ticket. Just because of the way I looked. And
now I don't have a ticket and they let me travel, so it's very different
times (laughs).


Is it typical for Bristol, the underground movement? Is it more active
there then elsewhere in the UK?

Yeah, I always get the impression that rebellion comes from the west of
England first. The southwest has had the strongest party scene, which is a
politicized movement. And the thing with Bristol is that there is a general
acceptance of difference there and even of a bit of madness and insanity
and also of doing your own thing. Many people move to Bristol to do their
art or their mountain biking or skateboarding... the main thing there is to
enjoy yourself, not to make lots of money. So there is an appreciation of
the good life and people aren't tied to going to their jobs, for instance
as in London. People have a lot to lose there if they started to protest
maybe. And they're very preoccupied there with style and fashion. Bristol
has more of a hippie/punk aesthetic.


Your works seem always seem to have an ideological philosophy behind it,
even though they can appear useless sometimes. Can you explain that?

Well, I'd say that I'm a fairly normal person, sometimes in favor with the
dominant politic but mostly not. Most people want good health service,
education, good quality food, good quality housing. If you ask any group of
people the things the majority say they wouldn't allow, and they're the
kind of things that I would like to have for myself and others, for some
reason this is not allowed and seen as an extreme position. So, yeah, I
would say I'm a social anarchist and I think most people are. I think the
thing with anarchy is, that we already have it. It's not something that we
really have to fight for. Most people want some level of autonomy and
responsibility and quality, but there are greedy, powerful people that try
to take that away from what we have. So I'm a social anarchist but I see
myself as not extreme. Most other people come from that position as well,
they just don't like the terminology.


Your works can be described as activities. Do you feel kinship with
performance artists?

I would say that even the work that's on-line, is mostly performative. I've
spent a lot of time outside doing things on the streets that are probably
performance. I wouldn't put them on a stage. The work we're doing here at
the moment is performative, which is slightly different to performance. It
is an action that doesn't require an audience. It's a thing primarily for
yourself or for the people you're with. It can be viewed by other people
and is sometimes pleasant or unpleasant for them. For instance last night
we were climbing public sculpture. Some people would find that funny, and
we enjoyed doing it very much, other people might find it very annoying and
try to stop us. We don't do it to get attention, you know, we could easily
contact the local media and say we are climbing the favorite sculptures
here, but that's not the point for us. If that happens, fine, but it's
primarily for ourselves and maybe an inspiration to other people if they
see it.


Did you document what you did last night?

No, we are going to do that today. The past few days we've just been trying
things out, getting to know the area. I was in Barcelona last week,
climbing public sculpture there. We documented a lot of things, made lots
of good photos. Barcelona is more photogenic than Rotterdam, better
weather. I was unsure whether to document things. I enjoy having pictures
of things that have happened in the past, but then somehow they're a bit of
a weight around your neck. You can be nostalgic about it and also you stop
performing for yourself, you perform for the camera.


On your website you have a whole list of descriptions of the things you
did. To read those descriptions is in itself very enjoyable. You can
consider them art.

The work I do only really works when it's a story. So if you look at my
work on the website, unless you are involved somehow in the group that was
doing similar work or if you look very closely at the work, you wouldn't
really understand it. You would need me to come along and tell the story.
For instance, we could show a sculpture of the bridge or the sculpture,
maybe with one of us on the top, but it would really require some of us to
come along and say how we did it, what happened and what the picture of the
policeman meant. So I think in some way that was a way to avoid
commodification of my work; the only way to understand it or really show it
would be for me to be present. And then I keep control of it.


Some of you work is intervention into other territory. Are you intervening
to make something better or are you trying to destroy something when you
intervene?

It's in my character and I would dare to say that it's a good way to behave
if you destroy and create in equal measure. There are things that other
people have built that are designed to repress or to upset the environment
or society or individuals and I think you shouldn't be afraid of destroying
them. Also you have to have a strong creative process as well to replace or
build things before you destroy things.


How fast is the switch for you between an idea and actually realizing the
idea. Is the time factor imporatant in your work and is working fast
important?

I think that you can see from my CV that I've done a lot of stuff and that
I like to work fast. I'm quite competitive, I think you have to outperform.
if you have a belief that the thing you are trying to overcome is somehow
inferior to you, I think you have to be faster than it and better than it.
A good example is the free software movement now. If you take Linux and put
it on a computer it will outperform a proprietory operating system, because
it's not actually trying to extract a profit from you. Whereas Microsoft or
Apple are trying to take something from you. You can think of that as them
taking your time and your attention. I guess I do different types of work,
so it's hard to say what comes first. Often I'm doing something or I've
done something and the ideas come later. But it's generally very quick. My
best work is when I have the idea and I've realized it that day. They are
the projects that people remember and celebrate. The ones that take months
and months of thinking and then realization, somehow they're forced. But
you have to do both, I think. You have to go through the toil and pain to
have that moment of brilliant inspiration. The perfect project for me is
walking down the street, looking at something, having an idea and having it
finished by the evening. Like the X project, it's just a graffiti project.
I would graffiti a URL, and if people were interested and saw it and noted
it down and visited that site, it would ask them where they saw it, who
they thought did it and why and it would keep a log of that information. So
it's a log of my travels and of what people think of graffiti. I think
that's my favorite project, it's very, very simple but it's going five
years now.


Do you feel you are constantly chasing technological developments? Is it
rewarding to always follow these developments?

Ten years ago I decided or realized you had to be at the front end of
technological development to either critique it or destroy it or modify it
and. at that time I was walking down the street with a piece of chalk in my
hands, doing graffiti. I think I've been succesful, I've educated myself
with computers and also now with genetics. I do feel that in some ways it's
a mistake to learn the language of your opposition. If you learn to speak
computer language or scientific language, it's dangerous, because you
become seduced by the aesthetic of that. And also you lose the ability to
speak your previous language, so in some ways I'd say you should ignore all
the things that you don't like and create your own thing immediately.
There's this myth that you can't change things from the outside, that you'd
have to go off from the inside to change them. I think occasionaly that's
correct, but mostly it's wrong.


How important is visual artistic expression in your work? Can you
appreciate it in other people's work?

Yes. I wouldn't say I'm a visual artist anymore though, but I guess do have
a recognizable aesthetic to my work. I do enjoy that in other people's
work. But as a thing for itself, I wouldn't just make visual work anymore.
I think there are far more pressing issues for the planet. I don't need to
list all the problems that we're facing now. At this very moment I think
artists are there not to represent, but to shape and transform reality.
Visual art can, a little bit, but there are far more explosive media to
work in now.


Currently your work is aimed toward biotechnology. Isn't it difficult to
intervene in this world?

Well, it's a new area, so there are a lot of things that have to fall into
place. It's a big area still. I managed to do a genetics project,
Superweed, which is a genuine genetically modified organism. I did that on
a budget of five hundred U.S. dollars. But I had no training in biology, it
took me six months of research. I think if you're dedicated and prepared to
educate yourself, then I think you can do that, but there's a lot of
pitfalls along the way, a lot of seductions and dead ends. The most
interesting or viable or effective artistic practice concerning genetics at
the moment is just destruction. Like pulling up crops, destroying
laboratories or taking out patterns, blocking other people's patterns.


Why do you feel like destroying these things?

I see absolutely no reason for biotechnology. I think it's in the wrong
hands and for all the wrong motivations. The main reasons that are stated
are to end starvation. starvation isn't caused by lack of food, it's caused
by people destroying their economies. Biotechnology is just part of that
process and it's going to exaggerate that. They say that it's going to
benefit people's health. the real reasons that people are sick is because
of mass industrialization of the food chain. People get cancer basically,
which is a modern disease. If you remove most of these industrial
processes, you are not going to need all these medicines. There are people
that get sick 'naturally', that's unfortunate and there should be research
for that. But for instance we've had a scandal recently where AIDS vaccines
have been denied to people in South Africa because they can't afford to pay
them.


What gave you the urge to aim your work at a different field? Were you at
an endpoint?

Yes, I try to place myself in a position that's effective. My concerns are
for property and representation. I got onto the internet because that was
the most explosive and potentially succesful area to work with in those
fields. That's kind of died down now. Also there is to some degree failure
within our strategies. There's a lot of people who in agreement that they
would do a temporary intervention in institutions and the art market have
been seduced into that and are still working there. I abandoned that when I
saw that we had failed in some way. And also biotechnology and genetics was
in ascendant and was more urgent to address. All of us need to eat three
times a day, we have to eat, we don't have to check our email.
Interventions in the food chain and our bodies is far more critical than
Microsoft (laughs). I'm still in the process of educating myself, I've only
been interested in biotechnology for a couple of years. I guess I'm quite
well known for having a taste for good food, so I'm learning more about how
food is produced, about good quality food. For instance I seek out wild
food now. There's a lot of talk about organic food and that's been
recuperated by the corporations now. It's hard to get non-industrialized
organic food in the store. So I go out looking for wild food, like wild
strawberries and fish and stuff like that.


Do you think some of the work done by professional biotechnologists can be
described as art, even though it's not meant that way?

One of these questions that goes around in circles is 'what is art?'
Somehow art seems to have a greater status than driving a bus. People get
very edgy when you start to compare the two, especially the bus drivers,
and scientists are a bit like that as well. People feel like you can gain
instant credibility by claiming something art or yourself as an artist. I
think that is true to some extent, but it clouds what the real positions or
issues are. I think science is very creative and many other disciplines as
well. But I think it is worth it being disciplined in your speech or your
thinking. For me art is about aesthetics, it does incorporate history as
well. for instance some of the things I do aren't art at all, because I
have no historical reference in them. But science does have a lot of
history and there are aesthetics in there as well. and it's creative, so
there are portions of science that could be described as artistic practice.
But these are just my own personal definitions. I think there is a vogue
for art and science at the moment and I think mostly that the artists are
being used as PR-representatives for unpopular practice that science and
economy is trying to put on the general public. So I'm quite cynical about
this whole thing of uniting science and art.


The theme for this exhibition is 'adrift'. How does that relate to your
artistic activities? Being adrift? Feeling adrift?

I don't know much about this project, we're on a ship. I have not lived
anywhere particularly for about seven years now and I like the idea of
having a traveling group of people, nomads who are going from place to
place doing political and cultural projects. I've been based at The Cube
cinema in Bristol, which is a building. But most other people there come
from all over the place. The past seven years I myself have traveled
between cultural centres throughout the world and I appreciate them very
much, their hospitality and the workplaces that they are providing for me.
but it's interesting to see a an art centre that actually moves, I haven't
had time to see how succesful that is yet, I've only been here a couple of
days.


The Cube Microplex, Bristol, England is described as one of the worlds
several Micro-Cinemas. Could you explain what The Cube is and what the
results are?

The Cube Microplex has been running for three years in Bristol. It's
continuing the tradition of performance and film in a building, that's been
a community arts centre for twenty years. It currently has no funding,
there's a group of about ten volunteers that run it and another ten people
that come and go. It puts on events every day. The money comes from people
coming on the door and paying to see films or bands. My role there has been
to set up systems and mechanisms to work more collaboratively and more open
and democratic between the workers there and it's members. It's a
membership cinema, everyone has to be a member to come in. The primary way
to do that has been with computer systems. Since I've been there  we've
built about ten computers from scraps and a few purchased components. We've
installed Linux on all of those and learned how to use that.


You also participate in an organization called irational. They have a
website irational.org. 'To irate' is to be angry at someone. Is that the
motivation behind the irational group?

I chose the name and I just sold a domain called cybercafe.org, which was a
quite valuable name. Then I was thinking, well, let's push that a little
bit, let's have a name that you probably wouldn't be able to sell. And also
I like to spell things that look. things that you write on paper often look
bad on the screen. If you type irrational, the conventional word, on the
screen, it doesn't look very nice. There's my visual art side coming out!
So it looks better with one 'r'. And also it's a joke, to see if you can
change the way people spell the word. People do spell it sometimes
differently and also other people have registered the domain irational.net.
So it's a combination of things.


What kind of project is irational.org?

Irational is a group of people, more than a website. It started off as a
website, now it focuses more on the people as opposed to the machines.
There's five of us and we share our interests in property and
representation, but we work in all different ways. We're not a group like
Art Mart that all work together to be this one project. We work mostly
individually on different projects, but support each other, either through
discourse, having a context decide our work, or even financially.


You also have a fascination with radio. You once said 'if you can somehow
combine the global reach of the internet with your  locality you get the
best of both worlds'. Can you explain that in relation to your recent
projects?

Next week I'm in Latvia and I'm doing maintenance on a radio station that
myself and Kate Rich helped to set up last year. We found ourselves in a
burnt out tower block on a former Soviet submarine base, surrounded by
alcoholic, chain smoking teenagers and thought that building a radio
station might be good for them. So we did that and left it for them and
this year I'm only going back to see how they're getting on, I'm taking a
new transmitter. That station transformed their environment quite
significantly but there was no internet component to that. I've built
several radio stations in Canada that link transmitters to the internet. I
find that quite exciting. The people who listen to that radio don't know
where it comes from, there's no name to the radio station. And if you ask
them, they'll so 'oh yeah it's on 89.9', so they listen to it all the time
but they don't know what it is. They think it probably bounces off the sky
because of freak weather conditions. They listen in their taxi's to radio
from Japan or Radio 100 from Amsterdam. so they're listening, but there's
no mediation and no understanding and it doesn't really matter.


How does it work?

There's a Linux computer connected to a 75 MhZ transmitter, it's quite low-
tech and basically it switches every hour to a different stream of audio
from some place in the world that we've assigned it to look at. it's very
simple, the programming and the idea, and it just sits there twenty-four
hours a day, seven days a week broadcasting to a Valley in the Rocky
Mountains with 20.000 inhabitants. I've just finished another project,
which is the reverse of that. London has a very good underground music
scene, that manifests itself through pirate radio. There's about 60 pirate
radio stations in London at any time. With the help of Rachel Baker from
irational, I put up a Linux computer and again a 75 MhZ transmitter, and I
linked it to a radio receiver, a scanner, and it's on the internet. So you
can go to the website that that computer hosts and select a frequency of a
pirate radio station. It will retune the receiver and then send you the
audio as a stream. We call that a pirate radio listening station. On the
website there are plans how to make such a system, it's very cheap. The
software is free, you'll maybe need a FM listening card for about 40 U.S.
dollars. Most of the pirate transmissions are quite local, so only in
London it will take about ten of these listening posts to get all the
stations in good quality. It would be nice to have many of them, more in
London, but also in other cities.