PEN World Voices: Watching the Detectives

By Ron Hogan on May 2, 2008 12:55 PM

clockwise: Irakli Kakabadze, Hasan Elahi, Chenjerai Hove

Last night, Amanda ReCupido dropped by Joe’s Pub to listen in on “Something to Hide: Writers and Artists Against the Surveillance State,” a PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature event. “The reading was designed to provoke reflection on the controversial post-9/11 programs in the U.S. (like the fact that the government can probably see this post RIGHT NOW AS I’M TYPING IT),” Amanda emailed, “and the works chosen focused on the ways in which government surveillance threatens artistic and intellectual freedom.”

“Each of the evening’s writers had their own personal encounters with surveillance. Artist Hasan Elahi, who was placed on the terrorist suspect list, found a way to turn his experience into art. ‘The FBI couldn’t formally clear me since I had never been formally charged,’ he explained. ‘So if I needed to travel, I would call my FBI agent and let him know where I was going.’ The phone calls turned into emails, turned into emails accompanied by pictures, and finally, he transformed his phone into a tracking device, so that they could see where he was at all times. So far he has collected over 35,000 images. ‘It’s fine by me if they want to know where I am,’ he said as a portion of his images scrolled behind him. ‘But then I’m going to tell them everything.’

“Also interesting was new media artist Jenny Marketou‘s reading of Andy Warhol’s surveillance files from the late 60s while he was filming a porn video. Some of my favorite observations were that ‘all the men looked like hippies’ and that Warhol was ‘acting like a big sissy,’ but the suggestion that the film needed ‘more character development’ definitely takes the cake.”