Performing the post-panopticon condition: on the 3rdi project by Wafaa Bilal (2010–2011)

ABSTRACT

During a year-long project in 2010–2011, Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi-American artist, grafted a camera at the back of his head that captured one image per minute and transmitted it to the website www.3rdi.me. The project attracted public attention that consolidated a critical discourse around this project. Bilal’s project was perceived as a participation in the configuration of selfhood and embodiment, locating the project within digitised networks of surveillance. This article studies the 3rdi project at the cross-section of the prevalent use of wearable technologies, racialisation of surveillance, and surveillance art in order to account for the ways in which with this project Bilal has intervened within the representation of diasporic identity construction of the Middle Easterners in the post-9/11 era and how the project portended the yet to come presidential executive order 13769, commonly known as the Travel Ban, issued by President Donald Trump in 2017.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This project was undertaken before the popularisation of GoPro™ cameras. At the time finding a portable and light camera that could be grafted to his head was quite a challenge for Bilal.

2 At some stages of this project the artist and the team of biomedical engineers engaged in replicating the artist’s ear grown from human cells.

3 Bilal himself describes being influenced by a range of artists such as Steve Mann and Stelarc. See ‘A Disappearing Act: Wafaa Bilal and The 3rd I Project’. Ania Szremski, 27 January 2011, Available online at http://fnewsmagazine.com/2011/01/27/a-disappearing-act (accessed 30 May 2015).

4 In 2007 the Quantified Self Movement was established by two Wired Magazine editors Gary Wolf and Kevin Kelly. The movement garnered public attention as the two initiated a series of projects and an official website that focus on different aspects of self-tracking phenomenon.

5 I thank the reviewer of this article for bringing this point to my attention.

6 In One Year Performance titled Cage Piece during 1978–1979 Hsieh locked himself in a wooden cage. I believe the comparison between Bilal and Hsieh’s work provides a perspective into the paradigm shift from analog to digital modes of performing and documenting durational projects. While Bilal’s artistic commitment could be monitored in real time through access to the website, Hsieh’s analog performances remain documented through notarised documents.

7 See ‘Remote Repercussions: Waffa Bilal’, ArtAsiaPacific March/April 2011: http://artasiapacific.com/Magazine/72/RemoteRepercussionsWafaaBilal and Michael Rymer ‘An NYU Professor Will Reinstall a Webcam in the Back of His Head’, Village Voice, 10 August 2011, http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-08-10/news/an-nyu-professor-will-reinstall-a-webcam-in-the-back-of-his-head/ (accessed 15 June 2013).

8 These concerns raise an interesting point regarding normalised agency over controlling surveillance apparatuses, given that the NYPD already had established surveillance structures all over the campus. This example shows that the public has become accustomed to unilateral surveillance and generally expects one agent to be in charge of surveillance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Samine Tabatabaei

Samine Tabatabaei is an art historian who studies modern and contemporary art of the Middle East and its diasporas at the intersection of media theory, the social life of art and contemporary technologies. At Brown University, Dr. Tabatabaei teaches thematic courses on the history of media, contemporary technologies and creative life in Tehran.