Day 4: Tracking Transience

Remember Current TV? It was a short-lived online news network started by Al Gore. In 2008 they commissioned me to do a short piece on Hasan Elahi. He's a fascinating guy and an excellent educator/artist. Elahi's work often focuses on the subject surveillance; in this case, it's his own story of being profiled and interrogated by the US government. The video pretty much tells his story so I won't go into any further detail here.

We are kind of at a point in American history where one of the biggest government/corporate scandals of our culture has kind of been swept under the rug and forgotten about. Once Trump took office we all forgot about Edward Snowden and government surveillance, and I would argue that we even started to downplay the significance of online corporate surveillance. We became more worried about Proud Boys, Nazis, immigration, and other alt-right antics.

This video was made near the end of the Bush years, and Elahi's art project is sadly just as relevant now as it was during those years.

I share this video occasionally because I think the subject is really interesting and still important. There are a lot of things I don't like about how I shot it and edited it, but when you're working for a “TV” (online or otherwise) network/company, You do it the way they want it.

Here goes…

…ALSO.

As you all know by now, I'm using just about every substack post to promote the CAULDRON INTERNATIONAL FILM AND VIDEO FESTIVAL

Here is a little promo spot I made from yesterday's video. Yesterday was pretty hectic so I slopped this out in about 5 minutes. Not great, but they can all be zingers.

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Thanks for watching

Tyrone