Son[i]a #251
Hasan Elahi
Spending years putting together a public archive of tens of thousands of images recording details of his daily life, from bathroom breaks to bank transactions, and making it available to the FBI to help them in their surveillance of him, which they started by mistake, has been one of the high points in the career of Bangladeshi-born artist Hasan Elahi.
His projects, in the form of installations, web sites, and photographic series, led him deep into the world of extreme surveillance, before the advent of social media. A decade and a half later, his perseverance has shaped questions on the aesthetics of privacy in the face of government agencies. The accumulation of private images always brings into focus a sharper, less suspicious narrative, but it also opens up the possibility of camouflage, of sousveillance, and of what Hasan dubs the “non-autobiographical selfie”.
SON[I]A talks to Hasan Elahi about data bodies and digital immigrants, about obsolete laws and cultural velocities, about little brothers, big brothers, and the potential agency of tiny secrets against big data.
Music excerpts from “Lyriction for Flute” (1988), by Yasunao Tone and Barbara Held
Ramon Amaro
The researcher and lecturer Ramon Amaro introduces the basics of machine learning, its criteria for assigning value, the collision between blackness and the artificial, its flaws, and the problem of impunity that all too often accompanies them. He also calls for a techno-resistance that would require us to sacrifice our current view of the world and of ourselves.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Hasan Elahi that we were unable to include the first time around.
Deleted scenes
We dig up some unreleased fragments of the interview with Nanna Thylstrup that we were unable to include the first time around.
Nanna Thylstrup
Nanna Thylstrup talks about the digitalisation of the archive and its implications. She deeply analyses two consequences that both emerge in individual and collective spheres: first, the data shadow that big data contexts generates to each user; second, the politics behind the processes of mass digitalisation.