Le cercle de confusion Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige

3,000 photographic fragments mounted on a mirror
300 x 400 cm

The Circle of Confusion, a vast aerial photograph of the city of Beirut divided into thousands of fragments arranged on a 300×400 cm mirror, allows visitors to the exhibition to take a fragment of the image home with them.

Starting with a unified and meaningful view of Beirut, the duration of the exhibition will visually and symbolically put to the test—through the viewer’s experience—the fragmentation, dismemberment, and eventual disappearance of the city. By taking an image, the viewer discovers the mirror and gradually allows their own image and the exhibition space to be reflected in it. On its own, the fragment does not represent much—an abstraction, grain, raw photographic material. A paradoxical effect of proximity and distancing between what is close to us and what is foreign to us. Behind the body of the city, the mirror reflects our own bodies back to us. It is impossible to grasp Beirut; we never hold onto more than a fragment of it. Beirut does not exist and yet makes us exist as individuals, jeopardizing the dream of a community that is clearly becoming increasingly utopian. Challenging the recycling and mythologization of iconic images and tourist symbols, as well as the legacy of Orientalism, the installation acknowledges its inability to assert: “This is Beirut.” The exploration thus turns toward the image as a possibility, in a latent state, unable to escape the desire to represent and the negation of representation itself. For Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, the photographic medium does not serve to reify an urban reality or to convey a postcard image of the Orient. It is utilized for its function as memory and projection, but also for its potential for fragmentation and dispersion. The memory of a place or a face can never be contained within a monolithic, all-encompassing image. Le Cercle de confusion employs photographic ruin, affirming both the significance of something that once existed and its irreparable loss. There is a correlation between the ruin of a city caused by the ravages of war and photographic ruin. However, the photographic image, however fragmented it may be, restores substance to the vital desire to rebuild a city, beyond the often excessive and inhumane urban planning projects.

Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Larys Frogier, Espace Vital, exhibition catalog, La Criée centre d'art contemporaint, Rennes, 2001