[b]»LAX« (September 2004)[/b]
On 14th February 2004 Natalie Jeremijenko caused »a safety issue« in Los Angeles International Airport, known as LAX for short. The engineering graduate, Yale Professor and techno-artist is on her way to San Francisco and wants to go through transit on rollerblades; the security staff object. And it just so happens – to use her own words – that Jeremijenko has a video camera in her hand luggage. The 15-minute art video »LAX« emerged out of this experience and has already been screened at several European festivals, most recently at Viper in Basel. The video can be downloaded from the net for free as a series of stills.¹ It was recently purchased by Spanish television and will be broadcast soon as an example of »Disobedience in Public Space«. Jeremijenko, in association with video artist Kate Rich, has been running the »Bureau of Inverse Technologies« (BIT), an »agency at the service of the information society« since 1991 ². BIT’s often spectacular works have already been shown in all the major American museums. The most recent piece, »LAX«, documents a striking relationship between BIT’s glamorous art and the rather laconic oeuvre of Brit Heath Bunting, the most rebellious of all the so-called first wave net artists, and the collective he founded, Irational.³
»LAX« reveals what Kate Rich describes in interviews as the random exercise of authority in the name of public security. For the officials could apparently not refer Jeremijenko to any provisions clearly prohibiting roller skates. Jeremijenko in turn did not have a note with her testifying that the rollerblades were medically necessary In this situation security staff can come up with threatening-reflective sentences such as the following (left in English even in the original German text to convey its own idiosyncratic beauty): »You wore your rollerblades today. But you decided you didn’t want to carry your certificate which authorizes you to wear rollerblades. « The official concludes: »I’m sorry then you cannot rollerblade. « As Jeremijenko still refuses to walk, she is transported by wheelchair to the departures terminal. And there they observe each other: Jeremijenko films and the officials watch her. And ask the artist, who by now has removed her rollerblades, to go into a separate room. At times there are 16 security staff in the room. Suddenly questions pop up, like: »What day is it today? Are you on medication? « The Yale professor’s mental state is tested. It is the climax of the incident: for trivial reasons an eminent passenger rapidly ends up under suspicion of having a mental disorder.

[b]»knife« (September 2001)[/b]
The collective BIT and Irational express important positions of the 1990s art generation, which took shape in the slipstream of the bold buzzwords of the information society. A love of liberty was the driving force for this generation, the novel communication medium of the Internet a source of inspiration. This era, strangely lost in dreams, was terminated not simply by the bursting of the Internet bubble, but to a much greater extent by 11th September 2001. Bunting’s art project »knife« for example was initiated on the eve of 9/11. Bunting was arrested in a building in London on 6th September 2001 for carrying a knife. It was not the first time. Back in September 2000 Bunting was arrested at Gatwick airport for carrying a knife. Anyone carrying a knife in public in the United Kingdom has to have good grounds for doing so. Bunting, the net artist par excellence in the 1990s, had turned his back on virtual space in 1997, transposing his actions to actual physical space. Ever since then, a knife belongs in the artist’s set of basic equipment: the charges against him in Gatwick were dropped subsequently. His renewed arrest on 6th September 2001 was also because of a knife. Bunting – like Jeremijenko three years later in LAX – did not avoid the conflict, he did not act cooperatively. And as a result fully-fledged legal proceedings came about for a second time – and the »knife« project came into being.
An important difference between »LAX« and »knife« lies in the medium as such: reception of the video »LAX« is more or less possible without any particular prerequisites. BIT focuses in particular on visualising information society phenomena. In contrast, the basic act underpinning the anti-bourgeois art practices of Irational involves refraining from using the artistic image as an artistic medium. The incident in London did not generate any (commodifiable) art object, And nonetheless Bunting, even in actu, transformed the conflict with the police into art: just like Jeremijenko subsequently, with his non-avoidance strategy in he found himself treading an intermediate sphere between civil rights’ activism and art. The »documentation« of »knife« also bears Bunting’s artistic imprint, which colours Irational as a whole. The exhibition in Dortmund this year »The wonderful world of Irational.org«⁴ marking the collective’s tenth anniversary, managed for the first time to convey Irational’s aesthetic in a white-cube exhibition. The taciturnity and laconic style of the »knife« site turn out to be part of the Irational aesthetic, which conceives of the net as a maximal low-tech medium and still proves to be largely immune to all the enticements of the flood of computer devices. That means that Irational’s first homepage looks virtually identical to the current site.

[b]»Phone charger« (August 2006)[/b]
By now »knife« has been joined by the incident and/or art action »Phone charger«⁵: Bunting was arrested again on 19th August 2006 in Waterloo Station, London. The police became suspicious because of a mobile phone charger⁶, which he had converted to serve his own purposes, together with a home-made Coca-Cola extract he had produced, called »Cube-Cola«⁷. In those days fears of liquid bombs were doing the rounds. Bunting was interrogated and informed that he did not have a right to remain silent, as he had been arrested under anti-terrorism legislation. Finally the authorities realised they had made a mistake and let him go. Bunting noted that nowadays he finds himself in conflict with authority not so much because of his decidedly rebellious art, but simply because of his mere existence: »The lifestyle I unconsciously opt for is more provocative that what I do consciously and expressly as an artist. «
There is a personal connection between BIT and Irational, between »LAX« and »knife« or »Phone charger«. Kate Rich is a founding member of BIT, released the »LAX« video, helped produce the Cube-Cola extract that Waterloo Station’s law enforcement officers found so ominous and is married to Heath Bunting. She went through the experience of Bunting’s arrest in September 2001; Jeremijenko gave her the original 40-minute LAX recording for editing. Rich is aware that neither Bunting nor Jeremijenko have been through something tragic. But she is convinced that even resistance against »minor limitations of freedom of movement« is important. In »LAX« and »knife« or »Phone charger« Bunting and Jeremijenko serve as something like test probes entering, more or less voluntarily, into situations of conflict. Conflicts that for less privileged individuals may be unavoidable and indeed present an existential threat.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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