Packer's work is effective. Past the satirical subversion, his critique moves the political content into an ironic nature where he can delve and create a forum for the arts. Packer's persona between his art and life becomes ambiguous to the viewer. As spokesman for the Department, he becomes the medium of his work. Packer's public notoriety is thus reinforced by both his teaching and campaign-styled art. Warhol once stated, "…everything is sort of artificial. I don't know where the artificial stops and the real starts," 6 so too is this true for Packer's work and artistic delivery.
Are people going to read his work as being "so laden with irony, that only someone who doesn't understand the ironic nature of contemporary art might look a tit [State of the Union: Fateful Embrace] as an endorsement?"7 Using the internet to increase access to the public is effective, however, Packer's work does not fully reveal its intentions in a straightforward manner and, therefore, create a limited awareness in regard to its critique. Those not familiar with performance art or practices of artistic appropriation and subversion may find it difficult to follow the function of Packer's work. Other artists like Robert Smithson, Sol LeWitt, Mike Kelley, have written about their intentions so that the viewer can decipher the work more accurately. Packer has no provided the viewer with instructions or means for decoding the website. Interpretation is placed solely on the shoulders of the viewer who much analyse what is being seen on screen and judge this accordingly.

Randall Packer is the Secretary of the US Department of Art and Technology. He makes real speeches with politicians on campaigns. His position within the US government, thought, is bogus. Ironically, his ambitions to change the political system form within are not real either. Again, Packer has become an entity of his own making, with no politically sanctioned position or title in the US government. But here's the most ironic part: US laws protect artists against copyright infringement if their work is ironic. Packer has elected to use this form straight for Big Brother and snows he will not face any legal repercussions - as long as the work is a form of social commentary. 8
Packer's work is constructed thanks to technology and media constraints to create a new political framework. International designer, Bruce Mau, states "Most of the time we live our lives within these invisible systems, blissfully unaware of the artificial life, intensely designed infrastructures that support them."9 Similarly, the same thread of reasoning can be applied to political and media frameworks; Randall Packer exposes the theatricality of these "invisible systems" by incorporating propaganda, delivery technologies, and himself as the new artistic medium for reflection. Thus before technology becomes the intellectual property of government and other complicit systems, Packer has claimed it for his own use.

Packer's work is a satire of stage politics, it has been subverted into popular political frameworks: inauguration speeches; "official" political letters, propaganda videos; and video shorts. Packer shares similarities with the work of Vancouver-based political agitator/artist, Vincent Trasov. In 1974, Trasov donned the costume of Planter's Peanuts mascot, Mr. Peanut, and ran for civic office and campaigned to be elected.10 By exposing the political systems through theatrics, Mr. Peanut mocked his competition with undecipherable responses. An example situation:

Mr. Peanut managed to make his statement at the candidates' meeting by posing a 'visual question' to the other candidates during the question period. A retinue of his followers, including pretty girls in leotards and a band with kazoos disguised as leopard-skin covered saxophones, marched down the aisle of the auditorium… the girls flashed glittering letters spelling out Mr. Peanuts' name while singing "Peanuts from Heaven" along with the band. Mr. Peanut did a little tap dance at the end, but did not explain what his visual question meant.

Trasov's dancing "Peanettes" were too much for the dignified delegates to digest. Could a dancing peanut have had authentic political clout? When it was all said and done, Mr. Peanut secured 3.4% of the popular vote. Though similarities between Packer's and Trasov's work are striking, herein lies the difference: Randall Packer appears the authentic politician although he has no real political power within the established political system whereas Vincent Trasov, or Mr. Peanut, appeared to be an illusionary intervention to the art world, he actually had real political strength. After all, there was a real, albeit small, chance that Mr. Peanut would be elected to government.

Like Trasov, Packer has attempted by writing to George W. Bush to establish a bona fide Department of Art and Technology, however, Bush's automated generated response thanked the artist for his "interest in the work of President Bush and his administration."11 Perhaps by creating satirical doppelgangers of these systems, Packer has found a segway as an artist into the political scheme of power. Can the future accommodate a collective voice of artists? Packer's work may be an experiment into the realisation as a read future legitimate tour de force of artistic delivery. While it's ideological to consider this, the possibility still exists. Wouldn't it be nice to see the arts campaigning for your vote and becoming centre stage?

Footnotes:
6 Kynaston, McShine, ed., Andy Warhol: a retrospective (new York; Museum of Modern ARt, 1989)
7 R.M. Vaughan, "The Prime of Mitch Robertson," Canadian Art, Spring 2005: 43
8 Packer spoke at the transmediale Festival in Berlin in 2002 and was introduced by an actual government official in teh midst of other real political speeches. This is one of the modes of illusin Packer employs to blur the lines of reality and the fiction of his work
9 Brad harris & Sue Damen
10 ibid
11 Copyright: United States Copyright Office, 10 Apr. 2005. The Library of Congress <http://copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#10>7>

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