Identity Bureau Workshop: How to Make a New Identity

Heath Bunting‘s work straddles various modes of action, documentation and visualisation. Bunting is best known for his involvement in the formation of the net.art movement in the 1990s and as a founder of irational.org. His practice may be viewed in parallel with the tendencies of historical movements such as Conceptual Art or the Situationist International. Dismantling the divisions separating art and everyday life, Bunting prioritises information and action. His work is based on creating open and democratic systems by modifying communication technologies and social systems. He explores the porosity of borders, both in the physical space and online. Often performing as an interventionist or prankster and finding form within everyday acts of resistance, Bunting's work reaches its public through systems of documentation and distribution including photography, print publishing and the web.

Bunting’s works have been commissioned and exhibited at a range of venues, including The InterCommunication Center (ICC), Tokyo; Apex Art, New York; The New Museum, New York; Tate, London; Documenta X, Kassel; The Banff Centre, Canada; Lovebytes Festival, Sheffield; Art Teleporticia, Moscow; The Arts Council England; Proboscis, London; The Watershed, Bristol; and DA2 London.

Some of his well-known works are: readme.html (1997), which relates to the issue on the Internet of visibility versus invisibility. BorderXing Guide (Tate commission, 2002) in which he comments on the way in which governments and associated bureaucracies restrict movement between borders. The Status Project (2004–2008) examines how the construction of our ‘official identity’ as a collection of data influences how we can navigate the social space, the Internet and private or governmental databases. And Map of Terrorism (Tate commission, 2008), in which he plots on a map the information required when making an online purchase in relation to new legislation defined in the UK government’s 2006 Terrorism Act.