Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are Lebanese filmmakers and artists born in Beirut in 1969. Their partnership spans various artistic languages, including feature films, documentaries, video installations, photography, sculptures, performative lectures, and texts. University professors in Lebanon and Europe, they have built a body of visual research that delves into personal and political archives, mapping the invisible and the absent.
Among their cinematic works, notable titles include Memory Box (2021), The Lebanese Rocket Society: The Strange Tale of The Lebanese Space Race (2012), and Je Veux Voir (2008), starring Catherine Deneuve and Rabih Mroué. In the visual arts, projects like Wonder Beirut (1997–2006) and “I Must First Apologize…” (2015) explore the remnants of history through images and discourses that shape contemporary perceptions of the Middle East.
Hadjithomas and Joreige’s work engages with digital colonialism through a critical analysis of the narratives circulating in the virtual space. In the project “I Must First Apologize…”, the collection and study of fraudulent emails since 1999 reveal power structures and imaginaries inherited from colonialism. These scams are examined not only as financial frauds but as mappings of geopolitical and biopolitical dynamics that sustain global asymmetries.
In sculptures such as Geometry of Space (2014), the trajectories of fraudulent emails are materialized into shapes that make visible the networks of digital power and exploitation. The work suggests that cyberspace is not a neutral environment but a contested field where colonial mythologies are either reinforced or subverted.
The duo’s artistic production challenges Orientalist stereotypes and questions the Western gaze on the Middle East. Works like Wonder Beirut present 1960s tourist images that were manually burned to simulate the damage caused by the Lebanese Civil War. This act of intervention reveals the contradictions of representation, destabilizing the idealization and aestheticization of the past.
Deterritorialization emerges as a central theme in the artists’ practice. In (DE)SYNCHRONICITY, the internet experience is explored through events that occur simultaneously in distinct locations, exposing the intersection between global connectivity and physical separation. This reflection extends to scam narratives, which reconfigure spaces and times by incorporating fragments of distant realities into a discourse of manipulation and credibility.
The scams also highlight structural inequalities by appropriating historical events and specific geographical contexts. The phenomenon of scambaiting, where hackers reverse roles and induce scammers into embarrassing situations, reveals implicit political violence. Hadjithomas and Joreige unravel this dynamic, exposing the power relations and symbolic exploitation mechanisms that permeate digital space.
The credibility of scams raises questions about belief and disbelief in the digital age. The artists’ work examines the motivations behind individuals’ belief in fictitious narratives, exploring how elements of economic desperation and vulnerability are instrumentalized. Scams, by reflecting population displacements and global crises, become symptomatic of the postcolonial dynamics that shape the present.
Hadjithomas and Joreige use their art to challenge dominant narratives and make visible the invisibilized structures of digital colonialism. Their projects reveal how historical inequalities reproduce in cyberspace, demonstrating that the virtual is a field of force where history and politics continue to intertwine.