Back to All Events

Event: "Tracking Transience" Lecture by Hasan Elahi

  • EFA Project Space 2nd Floor 323 W 39th St New York, NY, 10018 United States (map)

In an age where everything is archived and the need to delete is almost nonexistent, can we remain private anymore? Hasan Elahi will discuss the new normal of post 9/11 privacy and describe his experiences with FBI interrogations and his subsequent projects in the lecture, “Hiding in Plain Sight”. An erroneous tip called into law enforcement authorities in 2002 subjected Elahi to an intensive investigation by the FBI and after undergoing months of interrogations, he was finally cleared of suspicions.

After this harrowing experience, Elahi conceived “Tracking Transience” (http://trackingtransience.net) and opened just about every aspect of his life to the public. Predating the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program by nearly a decade, the project questions the consequences of living under constant surveillance and has continuously generated a database of imagery and locative information that tracks the artist and his points of transit in real-time. Although initially created for his FBI agent, the public can also monitor the artist’s communication records, banking transactions, and transportation logs along with various intelligence and government agencies who have been confirmed visiting his website.

This lecture is organized in conjunction with Distant Images, Local Positions. For more information, please email projectspace@efanyc.org.