DUBAI: For an exhibition that only opened in June, “On Scams” has been a long time coming. Twenty years, in fact.
As Joana Hadjithomas tells it, she and her partner, Khalil Joreige, first started the collection of scam emails that inspired their solo exhibition — currently showing at The Powerplant in Toronto until September 2 — back in 1999.
“At that time, we were new to the Internet, and we didn’t know what (this email) was. We were really surprised to receive it. I don’t remember who it was, but it was the son of someone famous, you know? A president, or a dictator. We thought, like, ‘Why is he writing to us and proposing money?’ So we kept that mail.”
It was the start of an extensive collection, as the two (like most Internet users) began to receive more and more emails promising astonishing wealth in return for a small outlay to help transfer riches from a war-torn country, or disaster area.
“These days, we’re used to the idea of receiving mail from people we don’t know and will never see — but at the time, this virtual correspondence was so interesting,” says Hadjithomas. “Without really understanding why, we kept them.”
That’s a measure of the natural curiosity that has long fuelled the two artists’ work. Whether they’re producing fictional or documentary films, installations, or “whatever,” Hadjithomas explains, “it is usually based on very long, in-depth research.”
Their interest in scam emails was particularly piqued, she says, by the carefully structured narratives they typically contained.
“They were built like a story: the set-up, these identities — the wife of Yasser Arafat, or someone… there was always a story, a kind of melodrama — people are killed, or they’re dying of cancer… all these stories. And then, suddenly, they ask you for money! They ask you to help them, but you are the chosen one. It’s a very specific relationship — you’re the one they chose after long research. So we were really fascinated by them.”
Joreige and Hadjithomas ended up with a collection of over 4,000 scam emails, she says. And their research revealed that they were based on a long tradition of such schemes, which the Internet helped to expand into the global phenomenon we know today.
“One of the works we’re showing in Toronto now is called “The Jerusalem Letter.” At the end of the 18th century in France, a kind of hoax appeared. It’s structured exactly like the scams of today — it was at the time of the French revolution, so you’d have people saying, ‘We had to escape from the revolutionaries, and we left a lot of money that we hid. If you can help us, we’ll give you 10 percent of this money.’ It’s all based on the same tradition. And these scams seem to appear at specific times, when, politically, there is a moment of confusion.
“They surf on revolutions, political problems, economic crises, ecological disasters… For example, when there’s a problem in Haiti, you’ll suddenly see a lot of scams coming from Haiti — or from Russia, or from Africa, or Iraq,” she continues. “We had, like, 12 years of scamming, and you can see they’re almost writing a parallel history of the world.”
It was this idea of a parallel history that inspired the duo to create many of the works in “On Scams.”
“All of those things have interested me and Khalil for many years — the presentation and writing of history,” Hadjithomas says, adding that they were also interested in “how to give a physicality to something totally virtual,” and in “what we could do with something people usually just trash.”
One of the things they did was ask 36 amateur actors from Beirut, many of whom were immigrants, to recite some of the scams on film for a piece called “The Rumor of the World.”
“We chose nationalities that were close to the emails. It was really fascinating, because there’s a connection that you build with them through those scams,” says Hadjithomas. “They would try to really sell it — looking at you through the camera. And we wanted to see at what moment you would believe them — or stop believing them. As filmmakers, we’re obviously very interested in the notion of belief. How do you imagine corruption? Why would you believe in some scams rather than others? Why is corruption more plausible, to you, in some countries rather than others? In a way, it’s a kind of colonial way of seeing the world: Corruption is more possible in Africa or the Middle East than it is in Europe or North America. Why? Those notions were interesting to us.”
“The Rumor of the World” is an audio-visual installation with 18 screens, on each of which are two actors reading their scam scripts. “You feel this mix of people talking, (and it’s confusing). But if you choose one person and really try to listen to what they say, you’ll be able to hear them very distinctly. It’s all about how we’re bombarded with (information) and we don’t really know what’s going on, but if you take the time to stop and listen to one person, there will be a kind of encounter. Of course, this person is trying to scam you — but it’s saying a lot about the state of the world as well,” Hadjithomas explains.
The idea she mentioned earlier — that certain countries are perceived as more likely bases for corruption than others — is backed up by “The Geometry of Space” — a series of large-scale, oxidized steel structures that trace the “geographical trajectories” of hundreds of scams collected by the artists over the years. “It’s a beautiful sculpture, but it’s a strange one,” Hadjithomas says. “It becomes very clear, as you see the sculptures, which countries people are easily able to imagine corruption is possible — not just the people who are scammed, but also the scammers.”
In another installation, “It’s All Real,” many of the same actors from “The Rumor of the World” tell their real-life stories on film. “We tried to understand this notion of extraterritoriality that is essential in the scams but is also so present in many people now living in many countries. It’s an interesting example of these multiple identities and the way people are torn by them.”
Throughout the show, fiction and reality are blurred. “The exhibition is kind of a film that unfolds, and it’s not really clear who the victim is, who’s playing a role, who’s telling the truth, you know? Because nothing is really clear anymore,” Hadjithomas says. “How come, now, we have this doubt all the time? How come it’s so difficult to believe? We take all these precautions, and we still have this doubt. Nothing is really clear anymore. This is how we live.”
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