Holding the camera for Big Brother
January 31st, 2008, 2:14 am Hobbies Ideas
PARK CITY Hasan Elahi fumbles in his pocket for his cell phone.
“Hold on,” he says. “I have to check in with the FBI.”
He quickly snaps a picture of the hallway and hits the send button. A minute later, the image appears on a computer screen next to him.
Elahi’s life is on full display for the FBI and everyone else to see in an interactive art exhibit at the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier on Main venue. The one-time terror suspect has posted his life on the Internet as a sort-of real time alibi and artistic statement about surveillance.
“I think people should be asking more questions,” he said. “I don’t think people should blindly accept what our government is saying just because it’s in your best interest, because it’s for national security.”
Elahi was detained at the Detroit airport in June 2002 after a trip to Africa. He was led into an interrogation room and questioned by an FBI agent.
“Out of nowhere he asks me, ‘Where were you Sept. 12?’” Elahi recalled.
Elahi used his PDA to run down his life: a visit to a storage locker he rented, a lunch appointment, an art class he teaches at Rutgers University.
“(The FBI) had received a report that an Arab man had fled on Sept. 12 with explosives,” he said. “This was not a case of mistaken identity or someone with a similar name. The person sending in the erroneous tip said, ‘This is the guy’s name. This is his last known address. This is the guy.’ Someone named me.”
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Elahi who is not Arabic and is an American citizen was questioned by FBI agents repeatedly for the next six months. They questioned his ex-wife and colleagues and “knew everything about everything.”
Elahi said it was an intimidating experience, and he feared he would wind up in Guantanamo Bay. He said the FBI agents were polite and treated him appropriately but in a post 9/11 world, he knew who was in charge.
“Survival in my case meant cooperate,” he said. “There’s absolutely no fighting. The minute you show teeth, they pounce.”
He answered every question. Elahi said he submitted to nine polygraph tests before he was ultimately cleared. The FBI declined to comment on Elahi.
Because he travels frequently, Elahi then started checking in with FBI agents and telling them where he was going so he wouldn’t be mistakenly detained again. That led to him photographing where he was at all times and the creation of “Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project.”
“I started thinking to myself: Why am I telling just the FBI?” he said. “Why not tell everyone?”
The exhibit has been shown around the world and includes digital photos of the food he eats, the places he goes and even the toilets he uses. He has posted his bank records, flight records, phone records and other personal information online and even uses a GPS and a map to show where he is at all times. It is also uploaded to his Web site, trackingtransience.net.
At the New Frontier on Main, about 22,000 images are projected on the walls of a room. Computer monitors have Google maps that show where Elahi is at any given moment.
“It replicates a surveillance control room,” he says as he walks into his exhibit.
Those who have seen the exhibit have said they feel “creeped out.” It’s generating some buzz at the film festival’s exhibit for new and emerging media. The artist hopes it sparks a dialogue.
“Throughout the FBI investigation, he actively decided to cooperate with them to a point of compliance to where the current work now borders on a collaboration with them, albeit unauthorized,” the Sundance Film Festival said in its summary of the exhibit.
Elahi doesn’t plan on stopping either. Documenting his life is as “easy as breathing,” he says. By making his life extremely public, Elahi said it has actually given him some level of privacy.
“There’s so much information about me, I become completely anonymous,” he said. “I actually live a very private life.”
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