Acclair, 2004 - 2013
2004-2013
installation
Acclair is an ongoing speculative design project that examines how institutional authority reshapes the boundaries of personal identity. At its core, Acclair asks: what are we willing to surrender of ourselves — our data, our interiority, our neurological signatures — in exchange for access, status, or belonging? Rather than critique these systems from the outside, Acclair inhabits them fully, constructing fictional but plausible corporate infrastructures that make the terms of that exchange feel seductive and inevitable.
The project has unfolded across two iterations, each targeting a different arena of social control. In its first form, Acclair operated as a biometric airport security service, offering travelers expedited clearance in exchange for voluntary brain-testing — framing neurological surveillance as a lifestyle upgrade. Its second iteration transplanted the same logic into the art world, proposing "neuro-value" as an alternative to market valuation: EEG readings standing in for critical judgment, brain response displacing connoisseurship. Together, the two versions reveal something consistent beneath their different surfaces — the willingness of institutions, and individuals, to accept deeply invasive measurement when the reward is legibility, trust, or prestige.
Works in this Project
Acclair Security Clearance Service, 2004
