Henry Gunderson at Gern en Regalia

You could think of the bug phone more as a meditation device rather than an information device. The encased bug as a totem for your prayer, a mantra of sorts. The phone itself works as a framing device that encapsulates a singular specimen, a container to direct your attention inward. It could be said that all art objects function as a type of content moderator to hone one’s vision, narrowing the dizzying gaze of all existence to a single point of reflection. Showing the viewer what it wants them to see and nothing else. Here is a bug to look at; it can tell you all you need to know. It can pacify you next time you feel the impulse to drown your thoughts in a screen. Something tangible to hold onto when you need grounding. A reminder of the smallness and preciousness of life.

But the phones are ‘bugged’. This goes without saying.
I need not remind you of the tracking devices we carry in our pocket and voluntarily permit to monitor our conversations, locations, spending habits, google searches, and more. These bugs are watching our every move in compound vision; innocently suggesting cool art you will like on your feed, ever so gently guiding your tastes and sensibilities until you yourself resemble a bug, dull and suggestible. A metamorphosis so gradual that it goes completely unnoticed. The bugs know more about us than we know about ourselves and if the goal is psychological manipulation, the more data we give them, the easier it is.

There is also the ‘bug’ as a disrupter of systems, a pesky little nuisance, one that lodges itself in the circuitry and is fried to a crisp, a lone individual taking the initiative to carry out a suicide mission, wiping out the entire power grid triggering societal collapse. Either a “hero” or a “terrorist” depending on your value judgement of this operating system. This could also be a function of art, a mini terror attack on your neural pathways. Artist as bug; permanently lodged in your psyche. A transgression that brings on revelation.

Join the Bug Mobile network and reclaim your mind today.

~ Henry Gunderson

Henry Gunderson is an American artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Gunderson received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Gunderson has had solo exhibitions at 247365 (New York), Loyal (Stockholm), Water McBeer (New York), Ever Gold (San Francisco), Carl Kostyal (London), Castiglioni (Milan), Derek Eller (New York), Perrotin (New York), and has been included in numerous exhibitions in the US and abroad.