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

Abstract

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.