[Assk] Hasan Elahi

[Christine Zitrides Atiyeh]

Art Clubbers - here's the bio that Hasan Elahi sent me to use for the promo materials for his talk in March.  I thought you guys would like to read more about him.  I am super-excited.  He's going to need a place to stay in K-town on March 31st.  Any ideas?  He's also agreed to spend the morning of March 31st working with students, doing crits or portfolio reviews etc. before his talk in Alumni Auditorium that afternoon at 2 (his talk is followed by another artist talk by Annu Matthew, a photographer, who might also be willing to do some crits etc) so let's get on this and start making plans.  CZA, your absentee adviser.

Hasan Elahi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work
examines issues of surveillance, simulated time,
transport systems, borders and frontiers. His current
multi-faceted project, Tracking Transience, was
inspired by Elahi's experiences being investigated by
the FBI. As a result of an erroneous tip called into
law enforcement authorities, he was singled out as a
terrorist suspect. After undergoing months of regular
interrogations and finally nine consecutive
lie-detector tests, he was cleared of any suspicions.
However, this experience lead Elahi to conceive a
self-tracking device that constantly transmits and
maps his exact location alongside his financial data,
communication records and transportation logs. Other
aspects of Tracking Transience include a database of
thousands of images of airports Elahi travels through
and sometimes sleeps in, food he consumes in transit,
and public toilets he uses while traveling. Elahi
recently was invited to speak about his work at the
Tate Modern in London, New York University, and at at
the American Association of Artificial Intelligence at
Stanford University. His work has been presented in
numerous exhibitions internationally at venues such as
the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Venice Biennale
(Italy), the Kulturbahnhof (Kassel, Germany), and the
Hermitage (St. Petersburg, Russia). His work has been
supported with significant grants and numerous
sponsorships from the Creative Capital Foundation,
Ford Foundation/Philip Morris, and the Asociación
Artetik Berrikuntzara in Donostia-San Sebastián in the
Basque Country/Spain. Currently, he is an Assistant
Professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.


Dr. Christine Z. Atiyeh
Assistant Professor, Fine Arts Department
Kutztown University