Retreating Switch / I Feel Like That at Openings Sometimes / My! How Differently Things Can Operate Within The Gallery Context / The More You Try The Harder It Gets / Illustrative Plate from ‘Mere Mortals and Technology Volume 3’
ARS Electronica, 10 Years Interface Cultures, Raumschiff, Linz. September 2014
or 'Retreating Switch' for short.
Retreating Switch presents itself in a very quiet way: a simple switch upon the wall, like a normal room fixture. When pressed, it does something it isn’t supposed to do. It moves backwards into the wall.
This minimal work represents a drastic cutback to Bunn’s normal way of working. Hence the long list of titles, which alter the meaning considerably. For example, when paired with 'I Feel Like That At Openings Sometimes', it can be considered expressive.
’My How Differently Things Can Operate Within The Gallery Context' makes a playful comment on the possibilities of the white cube, while 'The More You Try The Harder It Gets' shows that the work can be regarded as a jokey moral lesson.
The deeper point, however, comes from the last title, 'Illustrative Plate from ‘Mere Mortals and Technology Volume 3’. Here, Bunn has created a fictive book title to raise the notion of the divide or separation he feels from technology and progress in general. As technology develops it becomes more and more unreachable for some - the provide of the few and the magic of the masses. Bunn asks the question, how is this strange relationship we all have to technology going to affect us in the longer future?
