The Rumor of the World, 2014
Part 2 of
Scams (I must first apologise) project
Video installation, 23 screens, 100 loudspeakers
38 HD films, variable lengths
In the Black Box Gallery, people of various ages and origins, amateur actors, filmed close-up, watch us, speak to us, incarnate a scam, a story. These faces and voices are spread out over twenty-three screens and one hundred loudspeakers, weaving a network, a visual and virtual architecture that creates an invasive rumor.
This rumor fades only when the spectator approaches the screen, so as to create a shot-reverse angle shot. Only at this distance does the story, incarnated by a singular individual, reveal itself. If the spectator steps back, a multitude of voices interfere and resonate within the space.
The scams, sent out in a blind and collective manner, usually end up in our trash files and junk boxes, but with the presence of these thirty-eight amateur actors they become individually directed, between a subject and another. Could these emails, with their specific style, emphasized by automatic translation programs that generate grammatical and syntactic errors, oscillating between comedy and poetry, transform into literary matter? Could they go from scam documents to micro-narratives, become moments of fiction and even emotion, anecdotal accounts in the etymological sense that they are confidential stories? An agreement emerges between the mechanism and the spectator, like it does in theater; one subscribes to the actors’ performance rather than reality. These monologues seem credible for an instant, and blur the lines between truth and falsehood, fiction and documentary. Brought together in the exhibition, from one country and one event to the other, from a story, a face and voice to the next, these tales make up the rumor of the world.
Email from Esther George Jacobe Email from Colonel George Ibeh Email from Ahat Sosnitskaya Email from Suha Arafat Email from Viviane Salem Email from Jalila Trabelsi 
