Hasan M. Elahi Quotes

Bangladesh, Artist
1972

Hasan M. Elahi (born 1972) is a Bangladeshi-born American interdisciplinary media artist with an emphasis on technology and media and their social implications. His research interests include issues of surveillance, sousveillance, simulated time, transport systems, and borders and frontiers. He was born in Rangpur and raised in New York City.

Despite the barrage of information about me that is publicly available, I live a surprisingly private and anonymous life.

Hasan M. Elahi
- Life
- Information
Big Brother doesn't like all these Little Brothers looking at it.

Hasan M. Elahi
- Big Brother
- Little Brothers

You can accuse me of being a terror suspect, but I can prove to you that I'm not.

Hasan M. Elahi
- Terror
If 300 million people were to offer up the details of their private lives, you would need to hire another 300 million people just to keep up.

Hasan M. Elahi
The concept of surveillance is ingrained in our beings. God was the original surveillance camera.

Hasan M. Elahi
- God
- Beings
- Surveillance
I've pretty much accepted the fact that you're going to meet ignorant people, and that's okay. You can't control that. You can't change that.

Hasan M. Elahi
- Control
- Ignorant People
We're all creating an archive of our own lives, whether we're aware of it or not.

Hasan M. Elahi
- Lives
- Archive
We don't know what the next generation of art is going to look like. We're kind of making it up as we go along. Not unlike the tech industry.

Hasan M. Elahi
- Generation of art
- Tech industry

It's incredibly disturbing when a country, particularly your own country, uses discrimination as a basis for an investigation.

Hasan M. Elahi
You hear these horrible stories about the FBI just doing all these nasty things to people. And you know what? In my case, I didn't experience any of that, probably because the way I treated them. I was like, 'Okay, what do you want to know?' So I kept going back to their offices on a regular basis.

Hasan M. Elahi
- People
- Stories
- FBI
How do you manage your online identity? It's something I talk about with my students all the time.

Hasan M. Elahi
- Identity
- Students
I'm an artist. And usually when I tell people I'm an artist, they just look at me and say, 'Do you paint?' or 'What kind of medium do you work in?'

Hasan M. Elahi
- Artist
It's really weird watching the government watch me.

Hasan M. Elahi
- Government
Information agencies operate in an industry that values data. Restricted access to information is what makes it valuable.

Hasan M. Elahi