In 2002, Hasan Elahi, artist and University of Maryland assistant professor of art, was detained at a Detroit airport upon returning to the country. The cause likely traces back to an overzealous tipster in Florida, where Elahi canceled a storage unit on Sept. 12, 2001. Elahi was released, but interrogated for the next six months at regular intervals by the FBI. Aided by “the detailed retrospective appointment list in his PDA, the successful passage of nine polygraph tests, a convincingly innocent persona, and a complete absence of knowledge of Arabic,” he made it through intact. In response, he started his art project “Tracking Transience,” which updates constantly where he is and what he’s doing. In its eight years, Elahi has amassed more than 42,000 images with the project. He speaks this week on a panel with photographer Merry Alpern and professor Thomas Levin called “Watching You: Surveillance Exposed,” which addresses social networking-as-self-surveillance versus governmental surveillance and more. City Paper spoke with Elahi by phone.

City Paper : When you began this project was it out of pure defense, or did you have art in mind?

Hasan Elahi: When the investigation began, and during the process, the last thing on my mind was, Hey, I’ve got my new project here. It was really difficult to even think about what was happening. After six months, I was able to think, Wait, what was that? What just happened? Because I was that close to being shipped off. At any moment, I could have said, “All right guys, I’m not cooperating, this isn’t legal, I need a lawyer.” But I knew that at any moment they have the ultimate authority to say, “Well we’re taking you somewhere, and we don’t even have to say where we’re taking you or why we’re taking you.”

I knew what was happening was outside the law, so it simply didn’t matter. You behave in some very bizarre ways, some very counterintuitive ways. Sometimes these things that you would think would be counterintuitive seem to actually make sense. You’re really reacting from a base of instinct. That was the initial motivation for it. After several months of me trying to understand what just happened—as I started recounting every little bit and every little thing—it slowly evolved into my current art practice.

CP : You’ve said before that by making yourself this public, you’ve actually become more private. Can you explain?

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