HASAN ELAHI - TRACKING TRANSIENCE

I got an email from Hasan Elahi earlier today saying he was on the Colbert Report tonight discussing his project Tracking Transience and how do deal with being on a terrorist watchlist.

In 2002, Elahi came under investigation by the F.B.I. after an anonymous tipster identified him as a possible terrorist. This experience was the inspiration for an ongoing project that is part artwork and part digital alibi: a website containing information about everywhere he goes and everything he does. Visitors to the site can see, for example, his most recent purchases, photographs of his environs, and information about his telephone calls.

Elahi describes this strategy as ‘aggressive compliance’. By providing all the information the F.B.I. could ever want about him, and more, the project serves as a kind of modest proposal, suggesting that these are the lengths to which one must go to prove one’s innocence.

The New Normal includes two works from this project. Tracking Transience: Evidence (2008) compiles five years of Elahi’s credit card transactions, while Tracking Transience: Position (2008) displays Elahi’s whereabouts through a collage of images and maps.

This makes Hasan the second artist from the exhibition to appear on the Colbert Report in the past couple of months, after Trevor Paglen’s appearance on 7 April. Sadly I’m in Australia, with no access to Comedy Central. I’m hitting ‘refresh’ on my browser waiting for them to post the episode online…