Review: Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige: I Must First Apologize…

Abstract

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige: I Must First Apologize MIT LIST VISUAL ARTS CENTER CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS FEBRUARY 19-APRIL 17, 2016 When opening a spam email, one is subject to the manipulation of its message. Whether intrigued, repulsed, or disinterested, the narrative that has been formed for our susceptibility is often more complex; a parallel history of scamming informs its modern practice, in which not only geo- and sociopolitical relations but digitization blur the distinction between good and evil intentions. The modern practice of scamming is situated within an imaginary realm, where blind faith facilitates an exchange between sender and receiver. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige's I Must First Apologize at the MIT List Visual Arts Center presented an investigation into nearly four thousand scam emails collected over a seventeen-year period. (1) The multimedia exhibition sought to illustrate the complexity of scamming on a global scale. The numerous emails that monopolize our junk folders each present a problem--a sick and dying individual, a person in political conflict--as an opportunity to make massive amounts of money. The premise is simple, yet the inner workings sociologically complex. For the victim, there is no return on investment. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I Must First Apologize made excellent use of the List Visual Arts Center's space by mapping the artists' revelatory involvement with the project. The Rumor of the World (2014) envisioned the scam as spectacle, using a cacophony of audiovisual experience to incite synesthesia. The idiosyncratic character of the work encouraged deeper understanding of the sociohistorical advent of the scam, all the while humanizing the scammers. Throughout the exhibition, transient networks materialized through interviews, trophies, maps, scrolls, and letters. The means by which the artists collected the ephemera was reinterpreted to concretize each ploy's digital endeavors, resulting in a fascinating exhumation of a subversive practice, its effects reaching further and more intimately than originally suspected. In The Rumor of the World, Hadjithomas and Joreige displayed remote communication through an immersive installation. Thirteen video screens played a rotating series of thirty-seven interviews, each positioned along the outer edge of a blackened gallery space. Circling through the space permitted a one-on-one encounter with each email read aloud by a diverse cast of amateur actors, who stumbled over their words and paused awkwardly in their speech. A mass of hanging speakers hung in the center of the space and gathered the audio into an unintelligible cacophony. Fictional stories on the local and embodied level, interwoven into a singular commotion, told the rumor of the world. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Approaching one screen, visitors heard the following narrative from a woman with long brown hair and a blue top: My name is Mrs. Viviane Salem. I live in Baghdad. She raised her chin and pulled for our attention with her declarative regard: I'm the wife of a lovely husband named Nassim Salem and the mother of three children. Her story was an emotional one and involved a family lost in the terror of an American-led bombing on the city. Mrs. Viviane Salem alluded to underlying motives of the Iraqi war: Just for oil, everything faded ... The emotional force of her narrative was tinged with inarticulate grammatical mistakes. Mention of money threw her story further into doubt. When she requested assistance with the transfer of $29.5 million, any semblance of empathy withered. Hadjithomas and Joreige, while filming the amateur actors, tried to remain unbiased. (2) Like someone opening a scam email for the first time, reading its solicitation, and judging its plausibility accordingly, the artists subjected themselves to the whims of each narrative. …