Video excerpts of men apologizing (fragments from films, music videos, politicians‘ speeches, or historical archive material) run on three channels, which are coordinated in a way that patterns, echoes, and correspondences emerge. All three videos are subject to a similar dramaturgy: Hollywoodesque apology melodramas are intercut with formal politician confessions; serious and upstanding men want to win back a woman, want to win back a whole country. The conditio hominis is told as a story of failure; pleas for forgiveness grow more urgent, more desperate, louder. Pleading, howling, knowing that even forgiveness cannot undo anything. In the end, no one listens anymore, except for the answering machine.
Julia Niemann & Leonie Seibold 
Julia Niemann & Leonie Seibold
Whispered pleas for redemption, on their knees, shoulders slumped inward, heads bowed, even a dictator does not hold back his tears. And half-hearted apologies thrown over the shoulder in passing, restoring order to formal endings of a failure – also: forced pleas for forgiveness, with death at the temple. With a phenomenological eye, and i‘m sorry for whatever i did examines the facial expressions and rhetoric of men seeking to absolve themselves of guilt. Fragments from press conferences, feature films, music videos, and historical archival footage map a society whose story can be told along the lines of men‘s missteps.
Apologies flicker at you from all directions, just like in the news. Patterns, echoes, and correspondences emerge. But it‘s too much. When everyone is always shouting sorry, you can‘t hear the one, even if he is speaking the truth. Question: Did you cry at the scene in Pretty Woman where Edward climbs up the fire escape with red roses to apologize to Vivian? Question: Why are corruption, terror and war crimes, why are rape, murder and manslaughter so often the fault of men? Question: Are we ready to forgive yet?
JULIA NIEMANN, born 1987, is a filmmaker and author based in Vienna. She wrote and co- directed the award winning documentary feature DAVOS, which had its world premiere at Vision du Réel Film Festival in Nyon in 2020 and moved on from there to Viennale, Max Ophüls Film Festival and Zurich Film Festival. She is producer of the film collective European Film Conspiracy and currently part of the Writers‘ Room for a series project of Komplizenfilm Berlin. As a freelance writer, she has published texts on politics and art that have appeared in ZEIT and Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others. Julia is currently working on her debut narrative feature MIAMI.
LEONIE SEIBOLD, BA MA, born 1990, is a dramaturg based in Vienna. She has been working at Theater in der Josefstadt since 2014. She studied theater, film and media studies and sociology at the University of Vienna from 2010-2017. Publications at the Austrian Film Museum and in Entkunstung Journal. Translation of plays for, among others, S. Fischer Theaterverlag. As a thematic interface between her two studies, she has been working for some time on the representation of sociological phenomena in visual media, first and foremost feature films. For example, she questions cultural artifacts about the representation of women and gainful employment („Working Girls“ ), men and emotions („Boys don‘t“), and faces and identity („Faces“).
Project. APOLOGIZING MEN, Julia Niemann & Leonie Seibold and i’m sorry for whatever i did, 2021 three-channel video installation, 10’21’’, color/b&w, sound
Julia Niemann – www.instagram.com/juljaniemann/
Leonie Seibold – www.instagram.com/bimbellala
APOLOGIZING MEN – www.instagram.com/apologizingmen/
