A co-operation movement

Why is Hasan Elahi sending the FBI pictures of the public urinals he visits?

Nigel Britto

Life changed for Hasan Elahi on June 19, 2002 at Detroit International Airport. The university professor was flying back home after an exhibition overseas. In those distrustful months following 9/11, every Muslim was a potential threat, even a naturalised American like Elahi, whose family migrated from their native Rangpur in Bangladesh to America in the '70s, when he was just seven. 

No sooner had his flight landed than he was detained by the FBI. After a series of conventional security-related questions, they cut to the chase - where were you September 12? Luckily, Elahi is in the habit of keeping detailed records of his daily appointments and movements, so he pulled out his PDA and told the FBI that, among other things, he had paid a bill for a storage unit in Tampa, Florida on that day. The FBI wanted to know what he was paying for. Furniture and winter clothes, he replied. The agent asked, "No explosives?" The Feds had been tipped off that Elahi was hoarding explosives. 

This was the start of Elahi's long relationship with the FBI. Back home in Tampa, he found himself being trailed by the FBI, and had to live through half a year of intensive questioning. "Have you participated in any acts that may be detrimental to the US or a foreign nation? Do you belong to any groups that wish to harm the United States? To which he deadpanned: "I work at a university. " 

Six months and nine polygraphs later, the FBI said: "Everything's fine. " "I know, that's what I've been trying to tell you all along, " he replied. Yet, he was advised to inform them of any travel plans. He did, but for someone who travels so much, he realised that it would only be a matter of time before he was detained again. So Elahi, who was brought up in New York, decided to take the battle to them in a subversion of that popular Jim Carrey movie, The Truman Show, which chronicles the life of a man in a constructed reality TV show, broadcast round the clock to millions of households across the world. Initially oblivious, Truman soon gets suspicious and learns the truth. Elahi offered himself as a willing, compliant Truman. He turned his daily life into an art project that broadcasts the activities of his waking hours to anybody who cares to know. He called it - what else? - The Orwell Project. 

"So, when I travelled, I wrote to them telling them where I was going, my flight details, etc, " said the 39-year-old affable, well-built professor who sports a funky haircut. "However, the mails became longer in due course;some even had pictures and travel tips. " Sometime later, he decided that if the FBI was going to keep tabs on him, he might as well do it himself. "They needn't waste energy and resources on tracking me, I would track myself. " 

So, he proceeded to create an online record of his every move. Details of every flight he took reached the FBI. Soon, pictures of meals he ate, shops he visited, and even urinals he went to reached the FBI. "They wanted to know my business, so I had to tell them, " he says, pointing to a screenshot of the 100-odd urinals he had visited. 

What started out as a self-surveillance mechanism - he refuses to call it a 'mockery' - gradually evolved into an art project. "As of this morning, 47, 196 images have been sent to the FBI. " How does he do it? "My iPhone, I just send the images and the server does all the back-end work like categorisation, etc. " It's not just the FBI that can access his information - anyone in the world can by logging on to his website www. trackingtransience. net. 

It's performance art taken to an extreme but Elahi, who teaches of digital cultures and creativity at the University of Maryland, says he's more interested in the methodology of working rather than disciplines, mediums or techniques. "What I'm into is creative problem-solving, " he says. "Artists tend to react to situations differently from normal people. " In the last nine years, the professor has done almost a hundred exhibitions around the world and shared his story with millions. 

He vigorously counters the notion that he's exposing his whole life to the world. "Even with the stuff I upload, " he says, "I live a fairly private life. You really know very little about me. This is all factual evidence, no emotions. In any case, not just me, 800 million people are doing it (on Facebook, etc). Today, there are as many producers as consumers. " He has supporters too. "Some of my most vocal supporters are anti-government, libertarians and people who don't want the government in their lives. " The Patna-born, US-based novelist Amitava Kumar's new non-fiction book, A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb, which explored the US government's bumbling war on terror, also features Elahi's project. 

Elahi's website is remarkably user-unfriendly. "The stuff is all there, but you have to really sift through it to make sense, " he says. "For instance, the pictures could be anywhere, but only when cross-referenced does it begin to make sense. " He gives an example. "I send photos of supermarkets I visit to the FBI, but only when it's cross-referenced by a neutral third-party, which in this case is my bank, will you know what I bought and whether I was really there. " 

And when does Elahi plan to stop putting out his life on the web? He answers with a counterquestion : "When will you stop tweeting and sending out text-messages ? Sending out data has now become part of me, and I'm not going to stop. It's been a journey of self-discovery. Looking through my records has definitely enabled me to know myself a little better."

This article was first published on The Times of India's Crest edition dated November 19, 2011.