May 12, 2007
Hasan M. Elahi’s last five credit card purchases
| 5/10/07 | TAWA CAFE PISCATAWAY NJ | $8.51 |
| 5/10/07 | BORDERS BOOKS 01000942 BRIDGEWATER NJ | $4.50 |
| 5/9/07 | TAWA CAFE PISCATAWAY NJ | $10.04 |
| 5/9/07 | POS 7-ELEVEN 2477 WOODBRIDGE AV EDISON NJ | $2.14 |
| 5/8/07 | POS SHOP RITE #552 1306 CENTENNIAL AVEUS | $106.95 |
Something he ate on July 21 of last year:
Hasan Elahi, a colleague of my mother’s, is in Pennsylvania right now, as you can see here. Why do I know this?
Since the winter of 2002, Hasan Elahi has documented every urinal he’s used. He’s photographed every plate of noodles he’s eaten. His every movement, in fact, has been tracked through a GPS device in his cell phone and posted online. This is not blog-fuelled solipsism, nor a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. His careful documentation of the mundane details of his life is all part of an ongoing art project called “Tracking Transience: The Orwell Project,” which Elahi developed when he discovered that after 9/11 the FBI had taken a keen interest in his life.
A professor of art at Rutgers University and a working artist, 35-year-old Elahi frequently travels abroad for shows and lectures. But in 2002, after arriving in Detroit from Europe, he handed over his American passport and the man behind the counter “literally froze.” Elahi was led to a detention room and questioned by the FBI about his whereabouts on Sept. 11. Apparently, the owners of a storage unit that Elahi rented had called the police to report that an Arab man had been hoarding explosives and had fled on Sept. 12. “Interestingly,” says Elahi, “I am not Arab, nor had these people ever seen the inside of the storage unit.” (Good Magazine)
See his web site for links to more articles, and his other work.
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