SECESSION AS GESTURE AND GESTURE AS SECESSION
(OR, THE FIFTH EXPEDITION TO THE REPUBLIC OF ZAQISTAN)
In the summer of 2005, artist Zaq Landsberg won two acres of Utah desert on eBay for $610. The acres were cut out of a parcel owned by Michael Bartoe, and a deed was filed in August in the Box Elder County Recorder’s Office. This happens more often than one would think. A person will somehow come into possession of a large tract of arguably useless land, and then sell it online as a real estate investment. The places commonly subject to these auctions are in west Texas or Utah, where much of the west was cut into 1×1 mile squares. Landsberg’s four half-acre pieces are a narrow strip, identifiable only by GPS coordinates and is accessible by following a dirt road off of a Utah highway for fifteen miles up Terrace Mountain and then hiking two and a half miles on foot. His neighbors may be other eBay buyers or the U.S. government. He does not know and has no plans to find out. In a site so remote, it’s not really clear if it matters. What does matter is that some of the land is in fact Zaq’s—he is not arbitrarily choosing some place in the desert and staking a claim on it. He owns the deed to this site, and he can choose to do with it as he pleases, including declaring it a sovereign nation.1 The Republic of Zaqistan declared its independence from the United States of America in November 2005…
