Léopold Lambert – Paris on November 9, 2018
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I just came back from a trip to Kanaky-New-Caledonia where the first of three referendums to decolonize the archipelago was won by the “No” by a much shorter margin (56% vs 44%) than anticipated. There is would be so much to write about, but I am deliberately keeping what I feel legitimate to write about for my next book about the colonial history of the French state of emergency in Algeria, Kanaky, and the French banlieues as to give the proper context to the Indigenous Kanak (and their Caledonian supports) anti-colonial struggle. I however wanted to write a short article specifically dedicated to the French military police stations (gendarmeries) in Kanaky-New-Caledonia in order to draw parallels with an architectural inventory of police stations in the Paris banlieues published in 2016.

In the North Province of the Grande Terre (the main island of the archipelago), the only buildings that only fly the French flag — other public institutions such as town halls and fire fighter stations) fly both the French and the Kanaky flags — are the gendarmeries (military police stations). As such, they constitute clear reminders of the colonial dimension in which the country remains, despite the relative improvements that followed the Matignon Accords (1988) and the Nouméa Accords (1998). These accords, however debatable, are the direct results of the Kanak struggle towards the independence initiated in 1975, which intensified with the 1984-1988 insurrection. During these years, the occupation of gendarmeries was one of the prominent actions the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) organized to put pressure on the French colonial authorities. This was particularly the case during the active boycott of the November 18, 1984 territorial elections that marked the beginning of the insurrection, and it was again such an action that led to the 1988 hostage situation in Ouvéa island — when a military police officer opened fire on the occupiers, the situation escalated and led to the killing of four military police officers, the hostage take of every others for two weeks and the execution of 19 of the Kanak militants by the army. One of the main differences between the 1984-1985 occupations that never led to the death of military police officers nor independentist militant and what remains the biggest trauma of recent history for the Kanak people is that during the years of what is often euphemistically called “the events,” thousands of military personnel have been deployed in the archipelago by the colonial authorities, thus increasing significantly the amount of military police officers who were completely foreign to the reality of the country. What the materialization of the gendarmeries in the archipelago today reveals is that the lesson has not been learned as barbed wire fences have been erected around all of them, thus severing them even more from the villages and tribes that surround them. Although it would be naive to expect otherwise, the explicit militarization of the few institutions that remain under the scope of the French state (army, police, justice, money, and foreign affairs) is a visible reminder of the fact that “people are not born equal when facing the police batons” (quote from a French journalist describing the attack of the Kanak tribe of Saint-Philippo by the military police during the state of emergency on February 18, 1985).

All following photographs by Léopold Lambert (Oct-Nov 2018) ///

Gendarmerie of Thio, perhaps one of the most famous in Kanaky-New-Caledonia as it was occupied (along with the rest of the village whose mayor used to belong to the Front National) by Kanaky Provisional Government’s Minister of Defense, Eloi Machoro (who was assassinated by the military police special forces a few weeks later on January 11, 1985) and his squad of militants for over three weeks.

Gendarmerie of Canala, the village where the active boycott of the November 18, 1984 elections was one of the most intense (Eloi Machoro spectacularly broke a ballot box with an axe, with the complicity of the Kanak mayor, Maxime Karembeu). In addition of being fortified, the gendarmerie is situated, alone, on the top of a little hill that dominates the village. A municipal representative told me that there has been continuous demand that the military police “comes down” in a new building.

Gendarmerie of Hienghène, in front of the town hall, where Kanaky Provisional Government’s President, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, has been mayor for twelve years.

Gendarmerie of Touho, another predominantly Kanak village on the East coast of the Grande Terre. One of the most militarized I have seen.

Gendarmerie of Kouaoua, a strategic village of the East Coast because of its proximity of the biggest nickel mines of the country (Kanaky-New-Caledonia’s soil is the second largest resource of nickel in the world).

Gendarmerie of Boulouparis. The more “proper” architecture reveals the difference between the South province where towns are predominantly inhabited by white Caledonians and the North where the population is predominantly Kanak.

Gendarmerie of Nouméa, the main city of Kanaky-New-Caledonia.

I’m adding this photo from the local (loyalist) newspaper “Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes” from last Tuesday (Nov. 6, 2018) to show what kind of military equipment is deployed in case of confrontation between anti-colonial militants (systematically designed as rioters or delinquents by the French media and authorities in the case of the Saint-Louis Kanak tribe) and the military police. Although most people in the country insist on the difference of political conditions between the 1980s and now and that is important to note that these clashes were the only ones that occurred after the results of the referendum, this type of policing equipment — whose differentiation with the means used in France is blatant — has remained the same.

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Léopold Lambert – Paris on December 20, 2018
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This Monday, we were many in Algeria, in France, and elsewhere to be shocked when we learned that the Wilaya (prefecture) of Algiers had signed a convention with the region of Île-de-France (Paris’ region) whose President is a conservative Republican politician, and French architect Jean Nouvel to “revitalize” Algiers’ Casbah. The Casbah before being a UNESCO world heritage site is one of the most important sites of the anti-colonial history, as well as the home of thousands of residents who had no say in this decision. Three of us decided to write an open letter to him, asking him to renounce this commission, as part of what we believe is our strategy and our legitimacy (only one of us is from Algiers) from the Northern side of the Mediterranean Sea — we leave it to Algerians to form their own strategy against the Wilaya’s decision if they decide to do s,o and we will bring them the support they will ask from us in that case. 410 people all around the world (including from the Casbah itself) and from various backgrounds co-signed it and it was published today in French national communist newspaper L’Humanité.

(Original French version below)

Dear Jean Nouvel,

On March 6, 1999, almost twenty years ago, you wrote a text called “Boulogne assassine Billancourt” in the columns of Le Monde; a courageous text written resolutely against the scheduled (and sadly achieved) destruction of the historic workers’ heritage represented by the Renault factory of the Ile Seguin in the suburbs of Paris.

We start this open letter by mentioning this text because it is to the person who wrote it that we wish to address ourselves. This Monday, December 17th, we were many to be shocked, learning that a tripartite agreement was signed between the Wilaya of Algiers, the region of Île-de-France and your architecture office, in order to supposedly “revitalize” Algiers’ Casbah — etymologically, “revitalize” means to give back life, which leads us to ask ourselves if the life, however vibrant, which characterizes today the winding streets of this district is not worthy of being considered as such.

Algiers’ Casbah , before belonging to humanity — the one of which is supposed to to possess a world heritage — belongs first of all to its inhabitants, whether they possess a property deed or not. It then belongs to the Algerians whose revolutionary struggle against French colonialism has regularly taken roots in the capital and in particular its Casbah. It finally belongs to the anti-colonial activists from Africa, the Global South, but also from the North, for whom the Casbah’s urban fabric and architecture embody a powerful symbol of the struggles of those who can only use their passion and their environment against the asymmetrical forces opposed by the colonial armies and police.

The French have already partially destroyed the Casbah three times in the past. First, following the invasion of the Regency of Algiers in 1830, the colonial officers had already fully understood the potential danger of its insurrectional urbanism and ordered the destruction of the entire lower part of the city, thus depriving the Casbah of its access to the sea. Later, the colonial authorities built Haussmann buildings there, taking up the counter-insurgency town planning tactics already applied in Paris and Marseille. Again, at the end of the 1930s, when the colonial authorities went “at war with the slums” and destroyed the Marine neighborhood. Finally, between 1956 and 1957, it is still within the Casbah that the famous “Battle of Algiers” found its paroxysm. On the night of August 10, 1956, French terrorists placed a bomb in Rue de Thèbes that destroyed several buildings and killed 80 inhabitants. On October 8, 1957, this time, it was French paratroopers, having stifled this area of the city for a year, who dynamited the house where the last FLN militants in Algiers (Hassiba Ben Bouali, Mahmoud Bouhamidi, Ali Ammar aka Ali la Pointe, and Petit Omar) had taken shelter. As you may have seen during your short visit, this house has been left unchanged for the last six decades to make it a memorial, a memorial without an architect.

We believe that any change in the Casbah that would not come directly from its inhabitants and community would need, at least,to demonstrate an acute knowledge and respect of its past and its present, well beyond the instructions that the Wilaya of Algiers itself seem to have can provide or understand. Projects that are not committed first and foremost to serve its inhabitants as well as the historical, political and cultural legacy of this “city in the city,” and would rather favor their tourist or financial ambitions are not worthy of this place of life and history. The announcement of cultural projects in particular, while many homes experience leaks and problems of water evacuation, which is nowadays one of the major problems of the neighborhood, seems to be, particularly problematic and yet again, disconnected from the everyday concerns of the residents. Similarly, the release of a staggering budget to finance this study can only contrast with the blatant lack of resources that the associative community of the Casbah has to confront daily to carry out its initiatives.

Today, we came to learn that you collaborate with Valérie Pécresse, President of the Region of Île-de-France. In this sense, do we need to remind you that the decisions of the latter weigh every day a little more on the lives of the most precarious Paris inhabitants who, for many, are people who (directly or through their family history) suffered from french colonialism, especially the one at work during 132 years in Algeria? The same one who, in addition to her unequal policies, did not hesitate to join an Islamophobic crowd who pushed around Muslim devots in Clichy when they were praying in the street so as to protest against the transformation of their library prayer room by the municipality (in November 2017). The same person who also did not hesitate to declare that she would be in favor of a law aimed at doubling the prison sentences for acts committed in certain neighborhoods, in contempt of all constitutionality (October 2018). We let you evaluate the link that such actions and speeches can have with the French colonial history and its continuation through other forms.

The decision of the Wilaya of Algiers to “revitalize” the Casbah is its own decision, and we leave it to our friends in Algeria to fight it they feel the urge for it; that is not our role ourselves. However, we, architects, historians, electricians, cleaners, academics, artists and other activists, for whom the Casbah continues to represent one of the strongest symbols of revolutionary architecture, appeal to your political conscience to give up this project. Do not accept to be complicit in a fourth wave of brutal French transformation of the Casbah. All architects must be fully responsible for the political conditions and consequences of the projects they accept; any position that would make them only an executant constitutes an insult to their function and their ability to act. Sometimes this ability to act politically lies within the design of the project itself; at other times, it is rather in the refusal or the renunciation to this same project. This is the case here and you have the power to do that.

We therefore ask you to decline this invitation and recommend to the Wilaya of Algiers some of your Algerois colleagues who will adequately problematize this project in order to preserve the Casbah and the symbol it holds, rather than to control, alter and gentrify it.

Thank you for reading us, we sincerely hope that you also heard us.

Original French version ///

Cher Jean Nouvel,

Le 6 mars 1999, il y a bientôt vingt ans, vous titriez “Boulogne assassine Billancourt” dans les colonnes du Monde; un texte courageux s’indignant avec force de la destruction programmée (et désormais réalisée) du patrimoine historique ouvrier que représentait “le paquebot” de l’Île Seguin dans la proche banlieue de Paris.

Nous débutons cette lettre ouverte en mentionnant ce texte car c’est à la personne qui a écrit celui-ci que nous souhaitons nous adresser. Ce lundi 17 décembre, nous sommes beaucoup à avoir été choqué·e·s en apprenant qu’une convention tripartite avait été signée entre la Wilaya d’Alger, la région Île-de-France et vos ateliers afin de, nous dit-on, “revitaliser” la Casbah d’Alger — étymologiquement, “revitaliser” implique redonner de la vie, ce qui nous permet de nous demander si la vie, pourtant vibrante, qui caractérise aujourd’hui les rues sinueuses de ce quartier n’est pas digne d’être considérée comme telle.

La Casbah d’Alger, pour nous, bien avant d’appartenir à l’humanité — celle dont on nous dit qu’elle possède un patrimoine mondial — appartient d’abord à ses habitant.e.s, qu’iels possèdent un titre de propriété ou non, ensuite aux Algérien·ne·s dont la lutte révolutionnaire contre le colonialisme français a régulièrement pris appui sur sa capitale et en particulier, sa Casbah, et enfin aux militant·e·s anti-coloniaux·ales de l’Afrique, du Sud Global, mais aussi du Nord, tant la Casbah par son urbanisme et son architecture incarne un symbole puissant des luttes de ceux et celles qui ne peuvent mettre à profit que leur passion et leur environnement face aux forces asymétriques que leur opposent les armées et polices coloniales.

La Casbah, les français l’ont déjà partiellement détruite trois fois. Suivant l’invasion de la Régence d’Alger en 1830, les officiers coloniaux avaient déjà bien compris le danger potentiel de son urbanisme insurrectionnel; ils ont ainsi ordonné la destruction de toute la partie basse de la ville, privant ainsi la Casbah de son accès à la mer. Plus tard, les autorités coloniales y construiront des immeubles haussmanniens, reprenant les tactiques urbanistes contre-insurrectionnelles déjà appliquées à Paris et Marseille. A la fin des années 1930, lorsque les autorités coloniales ont fait “la guerre aux taudis” et ont ainsi détruit le quartier de la Marine. Entre 1956 et 1957, c’est toujours au sein de la Casbah que la fameuse “bataille d’Alger” trouve son paroxysme. Dans la nuit du 10 août 1956, des terroristes français y placent une bombe rue de Thèbes qui détruit plusieurs immeubles et tue 80 habitant·e·s. Le 8 octobre 1957, ce sont les parachutistes français qui, après avoir étouffé ce quartier de la ville pendant un an, dynamitent la maison où se sont réfugié·e·s les dernier·e·s survivant·e·s du FLN à Alger: Hassiba Ben Bouali, Zohra Drif, Ali Ammar dit Ali la Pointe, Petit Omar et Yacef Saâdi. Comme vous l’avez peut-être vue durant votre courte visite, cette maison a été laissée telle quelle ces six dernières décennies afin d’en faire un mémorial, un mémorial sans architecte.

Toute modification de la Casbah qui ne viendrait pas directement de ses habitant·e·s doit ainsi faire preuve d’une connaissance et d’un respect sans faille de son passé et de son présent, bien au delà des instructions que la Wilaya d’Alger puisse elle-même fournir ou comprendre. Des projets qui n’auraient pas à coeur de servir en premier lieu ses habitant·e·s ainsi que le legs historique, politique et culturel de cette ville dans la ville, et qui leur préféreraient des ambitions touristiques ou financières ne sont pas dignes de ce lieu de vie et d’histoire. L’annonce de projets culturels notamment, alors que de nombreuses habitations ne sont pas étanches et que l’évacuation d’eau du quartier constitue aujourd’hui l’un des problèmes majeurs du quartier, nous semble par exemple particulièrement problématique et là encore, déconnectée des préoccupations quotidiennes des habitant·e·s. De même, le déblocage d’un budget stupéfiant pour financer cette étude ne peut que contraster avec le peu de moyens criant que le tissu associatif de la Casbah affronte au jour le jour dans ses initiatives.

Aujourd’hui, nous apprenons donc que vous collaborez avec Valérie Pécresse la Présidente de la Région Île-de-France. Devons-nous vous rappeler que les décisions de celle-ci pèsent chaque jour un peu plus sur les résident·e·s précarisé·e·s de la métropole parisienne qui, pour beaucoup, sont des personnes ayant (directement ou par l’intermédiaire de leur histoire familiale) souffert du colonialisme français, en particulier celui-ci qui sévit pendant 132 ans en Algérie? Celle qui, en plus de ses politiques inégalitaires, n’hésite pas à se joindre à une foule islamophobe qui agressent les fidèles musulman·ne·s de Clichy lorsque ceux·elles-ci prient dans la rue pour protester contre la transformation de leur salle de prière en bibliothèque par la municipalité (novembre 2017). Celle qui n’hésite pas non-plus à déclarer qu’elle serait favorable à une loi visant à doubler les peines de prisons pour des faits commis dans certains quartiers populaires, au mépris de toute constitutionnalité (octobre 2018). Nous vous laissons apprécier le lien que de telles actions et discours peuvent avoir avec l’histoire coloniale française et sa continuation sous d’autres formes.

La décision qu’a prise la Wilaya d’Alger de “revitaliser” la Casbah, est la sienne, et nous laissons le soin à nos ami·e·s en Algérie de combattre celle-ci si iels le pensent nécessaire; là n’est pas notre rôle. Nous, architectes, historien·ne·s, electricien·ne·s, agent·e·s d’entretien, universitaires, artistes, et autres militant·e·s internationaux.ales, pour qui la Casbah continue de représenter l’un des symboles les plus forts d’une architecture révolutionnaire, nous faisons appel à votre conscience politique afin que vous renonciez à ce projet. N’acceptez pas d’être complice d’une quatrième vague de transformation brutale française de la Casbah. Tout architecte se doit d’être complètement responsable des conditions et conséquences politiques des projets qu’iel accepte; toute position qui ferait de lui ou d’elle un.e simple exécutant·e constituerait une insulte à sa fonction et à sa capacité d’agir. Parfois, cette capacité d’agir politiquement se situe au sein de la conception du projet elle-même; à d’autres moments, elle se trouve plutôt dans le refus ou la renonciation à ce même projet. C’est le cas ici et vous avez ce pouvoir.

Nous vous demandons donc: désistez-vous et recommandez à la Wilaya d’Alger certain·e·s de vos confrères·soeurs algérois·es qui sauront problématiser ce projet de manière à préserver la Casbah et ce que celle-ci signifie, plutôt que de la contrôler, la modifier et la gentrifier.

Nous vous remercions de nous avoir lu·e·s et espérons que vous nous avez également entendu·e·s.

Salma Abouelhossein, Doctorante en études urbaines, Harvard University
Sabrien Amrov, Doctorante, University of Toronto
Harold Dede Acosta, Architecte-urbaniste
Mohamed Abdelghafour, Assureur
Mara Ahmed, Activiste, réalisatrice
Meryam Ajari, étudiante en Architecture, TU Delft
Madeleine Aktypi, Poète et enseignante à l’Ecole Supérieure d’Art et Design de Grenoble, Valence
Heba Alnajada, Doctorante en histoire de l’architecture, UC Berkeley
Sahar Amarir, Etudiante au Centre des Etudes Moyen-Orientales, Harvard University
Antoine Atallah, Architecte-urbaniste, vice-président de l’ONG Save Beirut Heritage, comité du Arab Center for Architecture
Fatima-Ezzahra Abid, Etudiante
Elisa Aigner, Assistante sociale et psychothérapeute
Zaina Ait Ahmed, Militante décolonisée
Myriam Ait El Hara, Artiste plasticienne
Farouk Ait Hamoudi, Etudiant
Norman Ajari, Enseignant chercheur
Nora Akawi, Architecte, Columbia University
Esra Akcan, Professeur, Cornell University
Tamara Al Saadi, Metteuse en scène
Leïla Alaouf, Journaliste
Zahra Ali, Rutgers University
Yasmina Ali Yahia, Etudiante en muséologie
Sahar Amarir, Etudiante au Centre des Etudes Moyen-Orientales, Harvard University
Samia Ammour, Militante féministe algérienne
Laaha Mohamed Anis, Docteur, Business analyste et artiste
Francesca Ansaloni, Docteure en aménagement régional et politiques publiques
Noureddine Aoussat, Universitaire algéro-français
Rebecca Armstrong, Facilitatrice en concertation
Maël Assal, Etudiant
Sihame Assbague, Journaliste et militante
Faiza Atmani, Fondatrice et présidente « Femmes d’Alger & d’Ailleurs »
Amira Attalaoui, Designer
Rym Atallaoui, Artiste plasticienne & infirmière de la santé publique
Kader Attia, Artiste réparateur
Tom Avermaete, Chair du departement d’Histoire et de Théorie de l’Urbanisme de l’université ETH Zurich
Nick Axel, E-Flux architecture
Axelle, Etudiante mobilisée à l’Université Paris 8
Ariella Azoulay, Professeure, Brown University
Louisa Babari, Artiste
Salah Badis, Ecrivain et traducteur
Marine Bachelot Nguyen, Autrice et metteuse en scène
Riad Baghdadi, Etudiant, Université d’Alger 1
Linda Baka, Etudiante en Lettres
Sofiane Bakouri, Photographe
Saba Barani, Architecte et doctorante en architecture et urbanisme, TU Berlin
Romullo Baratto, Editorialiste et photographe
Ahmad Barclay, Architecte
Tamami Bataouche, Designer
Jean Beaman, Sociologue à Purdue Université (USA)
Merve Bedir, Architecte
Walid Bekhti, Producteur de cinéma
Mohamed Nazim Bekkouche, Architecte-urbaniste
Salma Belal, Architecte
Nadia Belaala, Architecte
Ramia Beladel, Artiste visuelle
Yasmine Belaala, Etudiante-vétérinaire
Safia Belazzoug, cheffe d’entreprise
Mohamed Belhorma, Commissaire d’expositions
Yessa Belkhodja, Créatrice en « stand-by », semeuse de mots, militante décoloniale
Yasmine Bellouch, Architecte doctorante en histoire de l’architecture
Cirine Ben Azoune, Etudiante en Sciences Politiques
Meriem Ben-Belkacem, Traductrice
Hajer Ben Boubaker, Chercheure en science politique et activiste culturelle
Hiba Ben Boubaker, Etudiante
Manel Ben Boubaker, Enseignante
Johanna Soraya Benamrouche, Collectif intersectionnel féministe contre le cyberharcèlement
Ibtissem Benarabe, Militante anticoloniale et antiraciste
Norah Benarrosh, Anthropologue
Maxime Benatouil, Militant à l’Union juive française pour la paix
Asma Benazouz, Journaliste
Saadane Benbabaali, Maître de conférences honoraire, Université Paris 3
Amina Benboureche, Traductrice
Djamel Benchenine, Artiste plasticien
Abdeldjalil Bendiha, Artisan décorateur
Nadia Bendjilali, Auteure
Aline Benecke, Artist, dramaturge et doctorante
Sarah Benichou, Enseignante d’Histoire
Ali-Dine Benkoula, Artisan bijoutier-joaillier
Farïd Bennaï, Militant au Front Uni des immigrations et des quartiers populaires
Mouna Bennamani, Artiste plasticienne
Abdelmalek Bensetti, Architecte et graphiste
Hajira Bentahar, Agent d’entretien
Massica Bentahar, Avocate
Omar Berrada, Ecrivain, curateur
Charlotte Malterre Barthes ( ETHZ/ Prof. TU Berlin)
Ana Dana Beroš, Association Croate des Architectes
Afaf Bessa, Militante féministe
Nargesse Bibimoune, Auteure et militante
Elizabeth Bishop, Historienne, Université d’Oran 2, co-directirice: “Making Space in the Maghrib”
Nacim Bouamama, Elève avocat
Camillo Boano, The Bartlett University College of London
René Boer
Irène Bonnaud, Metteuse en scène et traductrice
Henri Bony, Architecte
Zakaria Bouatif, Etudiant-chercheur
Lamine Bouchakhchoukha, Conseiller technique
Houari Bouchenak, Photographe
Yanis Bouda, Consultant
Amina Boudia, Biologiste
Bruno Boudjelal, Photographe
Halida Boughriet, Artiste
Mohamed Bouhamidi, philosophe
Ghyzlène Boukaïla, Artiste-étudiante multimédia
Asma Boukli-Hacene, Architecte
Naïm Boukir, Artiste plasticien
Sarah Boumédine, Syndicaliste
Safia Bourdache, Attachée de Recherche Clinique
Mourad Bouzar, Enseignant-chercheur à l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts d’Alger, Doctorant Université Paris 1
Hicham Bouzid, Directeur artistique de Think Tanger et curateur
Sadek Bouzinou, Artiviste
Boutaina Brahimi, Artiste,doctorante
Caitlin Blanchfield, Historienne de l’architecture
Elsa Brès, Artiste architecte
Armelle Breuil, Architecte
Hubert Brouta, Architecte, Sydney
Eduardo Rega Calvo, Architecte
Ro Caminwl, Artiste
Maristella Casciato, Historienne de l’architecture
Meriem Chabani, Architecte
Amir Chaïbi, Architecte
Nidhal Chamekh, Artiste
Malik Chaoui, Acteur culturel
Souad Chatta, Humanitaire, Photographe
Amine Cheballah&
Irene Cheng, California College of the Arts
Salim Cherif, Designer
Dimitri Chiron, Etudiant
Julia Chryssostalis, Conférencière principale, co-directrice, Law and Theory Lab, University of Westminster
Marie Cosnay, Autrice
Cyrille Cotrupi, Electricien
Deborah Cowen, Professeur associé, University of Toronto
Sheila Crane, Professeur en Histoire de l’architecture, Université de Virginie
Kenny Cupers, Université de Bâle
Gihane D., Directrice fonction publique
Adèle Dauxais, Chargée de mission
Anette Davis, Militante afroféministe
Régine Debatty, Critique d’art
Mehdi Derfoufi, Chercheur
Olivier De Perrot, Architecte Université ETH Zurich
Laurent De Wangen, Enseignant
Nawel Dekhli, Galeriste
Alèssi Dell’Umbria, Auteur-réalisateur
Yasmine Derrouiche, DAF Support
Sophie Derveau, Chercheuse en neurosciences
Eva Dietrich, Architecte
Amel Djenidi, Artiste visuelle travaillant tous les jours à la Casbah
Alexandra Dols, Productrice et réalisatrice
Toufik Douib, Curateur
Zahra Doumandji, Militante féministe, actrice et biologiste
Zahira Dris, Juriste
Adeline Dugoujon, Architecte urbaniste
Emmanuel Dupont, Architecte
John Edom, Architecte
Kaleche Zine El Abidine, Libre penseur
Bahijja El Amrani, Intermittente du spectacle
Baba Ali Mohamed El Habibi, Digital Manager et Photographe (né à la Casbah)
Nadia El Hakim, Architecte
Soraya El Kahlaoui, Sociologue
Lyoubi El Mahdi, Etudiant-réalisateur
Inès El-Shikh, Chargée de projet VIH/Sida et militante féministe antiraciste
Leila Elyaakabi, Enseignante
Anouk Essyad, Etudiante et militante
Dimitri Fagbohoun, Artiste
Diego Fagundes, Nimbu
Mitra Fakhrashrafi, Etudiante, Université de Toronto
Sandra Sainte Rose Fanchine, Chorégraphe, danseuse, graphiste
Kaouadji Fares, Chef de projet
Mustafa Faruki, Directeur de theLab-lab for architecture
Jessica Ferreiro, Travailleuse sociale
Feriel Fezoui, Stagiaire en marketing
Mehdi Fikri , Scénariste
Fatim Zahra Fofana, Chef d’entreprise
Laleh Foroughanfar, Doctorante en architecture et urban design, Lund University
Nada Diane Fridi, Architecte et anthropologue
Joao Gabriell, Blogueur et militant panafricain
Chiraz Gafsia, Architecte urbaniste
Feriel Gasmi Issiakhem, Architecte designer
Noelle Geller, Lectrice/Libraire
Clarisse Genton, Doctorante en architecture
François Gèze, Editeur
Ruthie Wilson Gilmore, Professeure de géographie, City University of New York
Kanishka Goonewardena, Professeur associé, University of Toronto
Aly Gouchene, Technicien.ne du son et musicien.ne
N. Guehairia, Ingénieur d’Etat
Nora Guendour, Professeur formateur d’enseignement secondaire
Anna Guilló, artiste
Nacira Guénif, Professeure des universités, Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis
Halima Guerroumi, Enseignante/chargée de missions arts appliqués et métiers d’art, fondatrice du collectif I.SIM
Anna Guilló, Artiste
Alyosha Goldstein, Professeur, Université du New Mexico
Hélène Veiga Gomes, anthropologiste urbaine
Sarra Griga, Journaliste et chercheuse en littérature
Maude Grübel, Photographe
Asma Guenifi, Psychologue clinicienne
Fadila Habchi, Doctorante et enseignante universitaire
Khalil Habrih, Doctorant
Lydia Haddag, Etudiante en politiques culturelles, Sciences Po Paris
Nedjma Hadj Ben, Curatrice de spectacles vivants, Bruxelles/Alger
Chaïnaise Hamaoui, Militante
Jasmine Hamaoui, étudiante en science politique et études sur le genre
Nabila Hamici, Architecte D.E
Naama Hamizi, Développeuse
Samir Hamma, Journaliste
Ahmed Hammad, Militant anticapacitiste
Julien Hammel, Militant décolonial
A.Hassen, Artiste onirique
Eric Hazan, Editeur
Samia Henni, Maîtresse de conférences en Histoire de l’architecture et de l’urbanisme, Université de Cornell
Gonzalo Herrero, Curateur
Laila Hida, Artist, activiste Culturelle, LE 18, Medina de Marrakech
Elise Hunchuck, Rédactrice, Scapegoat Journal
Jeffrey Hogrefe, Professeur associé, Humanities and Media Studies, fondateur de l’Architecture Writing Program, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NY
Gaba Imed, Militant FLN
Nuha Innab, Architecte
Saba lnnab, Architecte, artiste
Bogdan Ionescu, Architecte
Matthew Irwin, Doctorant en American studies, University of New Mexico
Smail Issiakhem, Habitant de la Casbah
Michel Jaquet, Architecte
Mehdi K., Auteur et développeur web
Djamila Kabla, Economiste et guide conférencière de la Casbah
Kamel Kadri, Architecte directeur technique IPFIG
Caren Kaplan, Professeur, UC Davis
Anais Khaldi, Chercheuse en sociologie
Yazan Khalili, Artiste, Palestine
Jameldin Khan, Ingénieur
Hamid Khedjari, Natif de la Casbah (le papa de Rym)
Rym Hanna Khedjari (la fille de Hamid), diplômée en gouvernance urbaine, Sciences Po Paris
Fella Khelif, architecte
Rebekka Kiesewetter, Historienne d’art
Elisa Kim, Assistant de professeur d’architecture, Smith College
Aristodimos Komninos, Architect et Urban Designer
Charlie Kouka, Artiste
Yanis Koussim, Cinéaste
Lalla Kowska Régnier, Commerçante
Guilhem Lautrec, Travailleur social
Annick Labeca, Urban Lab Global Cities
Samia Labidi, Programmatrice de festival, curatrice de films
Yann Lacroix, Artiste
Frédérique Lagny, Cinéaste
Adrian Lahoud, Dean de l’école d’architecture du Royal College of Art à Londres
Lila Lakehal, Géographe et artiste
Léopold Lambert, Architecte et rédacteur-en-Chef de The Funambulist
Mathilde Lambert, Etudiante
Sido Lansari, Directeur de la Cinémathèque de Tanger
Ève Laroche-Joubert, Sculptrice, New York
Nina Støttrup Larsen, Artiste, Professeure à la Haute Ecole des arts du Rhin, Strasbourg
Marina Lathouri, Architectural Association (Master en Histoire et pensée critique)
Youcef Latreche, Etudiant
Mounia Lazali, Artiste
Hannah Le Roux, Architecte University of the Witwatersrand
Faïza Lellou, Attachée de production musiques actuelles
Ana María León, Architecte, historienne, et enseignante
William S. Lewis, Professeur de philosophie, Skidmore College, New York
Christine de Lignières, Artiste Visuelle
Cosimo Lisi, Doctorant en art et urbanisme
Marcelo Lopez-Dinardi, Architect, Professeur
Camille Louis – Kompost, Philosophe (Universités Paris 7 et Paris 8), dramaturge
Elena Loizidou, Conférencière en droit et théorie politique, Birkbeck College, University of London
Xavier Luce, Doctorant
B. Lynda, Assureur
Amel M’harzi, Chercheuse en sociologie
Imène Makhlouf, Juriste
Karim Makhlouf, Etudiant
Nadja Makhlouf, Photographe et Documentariste
Nagy Makhlouf, Etudiant en architecture
Ahfir Malik, Lycéen
Charlotte Malterre Barthes ( ETHZ/ Prof. TU Berlin)
Malika Mansouri, Psychologue clinicienne et Maître de conférences en psychologie
Joëlle Marelli, traductrice, chercheuse indépendante
Iva Marčetić, Architecte, activiste
Francesca Masoero, Commissaire, programmatrice, activiste culturelle
Jamel Matari, Designer et photographe
Dahbia Meddahi, Architecte et directrice d’un institut de formation professionnelle
Nadia Meflah, Auteure, formatrice, consultante en cinéma
Doreen Mende, Directrice CCC programme de recherche des arts visuelles, HEAD Genève
Elis Mendoza, Doctorante en Architecture, Princeton University
Anys Merhoum, Cofondateur des Ateliers d’Alger (Ad’A)
Nesma Merhoum, Cofondatrice de l’association Ateliers d’Alger (Ad’A)
Eléonore Merza Bronstein, Anthropologue du politique et co-directrice de De-Colonizer
Karim Meskia, Enseignant
Lina Meskine, Architecte
Madjid Messaoudene, Elu de Saint-Denis
Sadek Messaoudi, Journalier
Ismaël Metis, Rappeur
Hassane Mezine, Photographe et réalisateur
Fatéma Mezyane, Inspectrice régionale de la langue arabe
Majda Milad Cheikh, étudiante à Paris 8, Collectif Prenez ce couteau, Paris
Mohamed Mimoun, Militant antiraciste et DJ
Saadia Mirza, Architecte, artiste résidente, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris
Nicholas Mirzoeff, Professeur, New York University
Noah Modie, Architecte
Sundus Mohamed, Chargée d’exploitation
Amel Mohammedi, Formatrice et artiste
Houria Mokadem, Professeure du second degré
Karim Ait Mokhtar, Musicien auteur compositeur
Jacob Moore, Columbia University
Sarah Moretti, Urbaniste-géographe
Tiago Mota Saraiva, Architecte
Patricia A. Morton, Historienne de l’architecture colonial française, Professeure associée, UC Riverside
Azziz Mouats, Auteur, journaliste
Sasha Moujaes, Etudiante
Sofia Mourato (Arquiteturas Film Festival Lisbon)
Amina Mourid, Chef de projet (Think Tanger)
Nathalie Muchamad, Artiste-plasticienne
Margarethe Müller, Architecte, conférencière
Corinna Mullin, Universitaire
Can E. Mutlu, Professeur assistant, Acadia University
Aya Nasser
Mohamad Nahleh, Architecte
Arslan Naili, Designer et co-fondateur de l’atelier N.A.S, basé à la Casbah
Faouzi Nasrallah, Médecin
Massicilia Nedir, Etudiante
Mame-Fatou Niang, Universitaire
Lucie Nicolas, Metteure en scène
Ilaf Noury, Architecte d’intérieur
Tadashi Ono, Artiste-photographe, Professeur, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie
Ager Oueslati
Iza Oueslati
Najwa Ouguerram, Center for Intersectional Justice
Shreya Parikh, Doctorante en sociologie, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jussi Parikka, Professeure, University of Southampton
Amarí Peliowski ,Architecte et historienne, Chili
Mehdi Pennec, Coordinateur de projets
Octave Perrault, Architecte
Lucien Perrin, Etudiant en philosophie
Ryan Peterson, consultant en affaires publiques
Lorenzo Pezzani Goldsmiths, University of London
Minh-Ha T. Pham, Docteur en études éthniques comparatives
Anne Piot, Etudiante
Ethel Baraona Pohl, Dpr-Barcelona
Jean-François Pinet, Architecte et doctorant en architecture,Université libre de Bruxelles
Cécile Portier, Auteur
Joanne Pouzenc , Architecte
Dena Qaddumi, Doctorante en architecture, University of Cambridge
Yasmine Rabet, Musicienne, compositeur et interprète
Kenza Rady, Coordinatrice de projet
Sadek Rahim, Artiste
Anandi Ramamurthy, Universitaire, Sheffield Hallam Université
Abla Rehoudja, Personne d’important
Béatrice Rettig, Artiste
Cesar Reyes, Dpr-barcelona
Fabrice Riceputi, Historien
Brahim Rouabah, Universitaire
Adeline Rosenstein, Metteure en scène
Edith Roux, Photographe et artiste vidéo
Andreas Rumpfhuber, Architecte, Vienne
Romy Rüegger, Artiste et chercheuse Zurich université des Beaux Arts
Youcef S.
Ibtissam Saad, Auto-entrepreneuse
Leïla Saadna, Réalisatrice
Célia Sadai, Journaliste
Arafat Sadallah, Philosophe
Sandra Sainte Rose Fanchine, Chorégraphe, danseuse, graphiste
Ayesha Sarfraz, Architecte, Pakistan
Alina Sajed, Universitaire
Walid Sahraoui, Cascadeur
Sara Salem, Universitaire
Lavinia Scaletti, Urban designer
Mauro Sirotnjak, Architecte
Katrin Ströbel, artiste, docteur en histoire de l’art, enseignante dans une Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts
Martín Garber Salzberg, Architecte
Coumba Samaké, Collectif intersectionnel féministe contre le cyberharcèlement
Kahena Sanaâ, Plasticienne et chercheuse
Yara Saqfalhait, Doctorante en histoire de l’architecture, Columbia University
Meriem Sator, Architecte
Sana Sbouaï, Journaliste et formatrice
Eva Schreiner, Doctorante en architecture, Columbia University
Pascal Schwaighofer, Artiste et doctorant Cornell University
Massinissa Selmani, Artiste
Rouan Sérik Imene, Architecte
Todd Shepard, Historien
Dina Siddiqi, Professeure agrégée de Clinique, New York University
Samir Slama, Paysagiste et journaliste
Younsi Smicha, Pharmacienne
Eric Smoodin, Professor d’American Studies, UC Davis
Elsa Soussan, Consultante genre et droits des femmes
Amina Tabti, Coordinatrice marketing
Fatiha Tabti, Retraitée de l’éducation nationale
Djibril Tachefine, Etudiant
Zoulikha Tahar, Autrice
Niloufar Tajeri, Assistant de recherche TU Braunschweig
Yamina Tahri, Educatrice sportive/Assistante sociale
Fanny Taillandier, Ecrivain, urbaniste
Rosario Talevi, Architecte, Berlin/Buenos Aires
Kenza Talmat, chercheuse en science politique
Wassyla Tamzali, Directrice fondatrice des Ateliers Sauvages
Eva Tapiero, Journaliste
Seghiri Tarek, l’Algérien
Frederic Tcheng, Réalisateur
Kengné Téguia, Artiste
Michele Tenzon, Doctorante, Université libre de Bruxelles
Teddy Théodose, Attaché d’administration
Olga Touloumi, Historienne de l’architecture, Bard College
Françoise Vergès, Politologue, féministe décoloniale
Pauline Vermeren, philosophe
Thomas Vescovi, Chercheur indépendant en histoire contemporaine
Tyler Wall, Professeur de sociologie, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Vehia Wheeler, Etudiante et consultante
Jozef Wouters, Artiste
Maja Ajmia Yde Zellama, Réalisatrice
Kamel Yahiaoui, Artiste plasticien
Nine Yamamoto-Masson, Artiste, théoricienne et chercheuse, University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis), co-directrice de Artists Without A Cause
Lamya Ygarmaten, Professeure de Lettres
Haythem Zakaria, Artiste
Myriam Zeggat, Illustratice et Auteure
Lynda Zein, Architecte
Manil Zenaki, Etudiant à Paris-Dauphine
Mr Ziani, Artisan
Sarah Zouak, Militante féministe et antiraciste, entrepreneure sociale et réalisatrice
Nadéra Zoubir

The post About the So-Called “Revitalization” of Algiers’ Casbah: An Open Letter to Jean Nouvel appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Léopold Lambert – Paris on January 17, 2019
If you enjoy articles of the blog, have a look at The Funambulist Magazine!

On December 20, 2018, we were more than 400 people to sign an open letter addressed to French architect Jean Nouvel, asking him to refuse to be complicit in the project of the so-called “revitalization” of the Algiers’ Casbah financed by the Paris (Ile-de-France) region. His response, which did not satisfy us, allows me to react again about the persisting effects of colonialism and the legitimacy of architects to intervene or not. His response is available at the end of this text in French (only the passages that I am quoting in my answers were translated) and this text in its original French version is available on Mediapart.

Dear Jean Nouvel,

First of all, thank you for taking the time to answer us, which attests that you took the message we sent you seriously. The content of your letter, however, reveals a number of misunderstandings, and it seems important, therefore, to begin this answer with a short clarification.

We are three people to have written this open letter. Although one of us is from Algiers, the three of us live in France and the only useful and legitimate reaction to a project that we disapprove consisted for us in writing to you. Had we addressed our reproaches to the Wilaya of Algiers, you could have rightly blamed us for the same interventionism we denounced in our letter. As for Valérie Pécresse [the President of the Ile-de-France region], I think that our point is clear: we have nothing to say to her ,and we fight every day against the policies she and the elected members of the party to which she belongs [the French Republican Party] have developed internationally and nationally, and continue to develop at the regional and municipal levels. Of the three signatories of the convention for the so-called “revitalization” of the Casbah, you were thus for us the only interlocutor that we wanted to contact.

Your letter tells us at length what you believe is the quality of your work; we let everyone free to judge it and we have not at any time taken part in the many debates which are wondering whether your architectural firm has the appropriate skills for such a project or not. This is not the question in our opinion. And although almost all of your answer is dedicated to this question; a shocking sentence, however, burst in and reveals that this is not just a misunderstanding. Indeed, you write towards the end of your letter “Half a century later, no one is responsible for the crimes and errors of the generations of that time.”

Here probably lies the whole problem as well as the absolute necessity I feel to write to you again. I remind you first that many people who participated in the “errors” (sic) that you mention are still alive. Yourself are only a few years short to share the age of the youngest police officers in Paris who massacred nearly 300 peaceful Algerian demonstrators on October 17, 1961. It is true that the responsibilities to be imputed are less individual than collective. France (of which we are both a part, whether we like it or not) has never apologize to the Algerian people for forgiveness for 132 years of murder, looting, destruction, torture and humiliation. The “crime against humanity” constituted by colonialism (which was denounced a short time ago by a presidential candidate who, since then, has become President and is less vocal on this subject) has no prescription and every French (even more so white French) shares some responsibility for this crime as long as it is not recognized, regretted and repaired. It is not up to us to say that the page is turned and that “the time is for mutual respect and friendship” as you write.

This brings me to architecture since your answer focuses mainly on this aspect and, being an architect myself, I think I can answer you. You talk about friendship, but when friendship is healthy, it is characterized by a position of equality. You speak of a gift [architecture as a gift], but a gift is generous only when those to whom it is intended are able to refuse it. The relationship between an architect and those who will be subjects of architecture is not a relation of equality; it’s a power relationship. Of course, this does not mean that architects can only be malevolent with regard to the people whom the lines they trace will organize in space when those become walls.  It rather means that architects must consider whether the position that they occupy within this power relationship is legitimate or not. In the case of the Casbah, the power relationship that the Wilaya of Algiers, Valérie Pécresse and yourself propose to exercise towards a neighborhood that has already experienced so many times the expense of such an equation can only be harmful to its inhabitants.

Unfortunately, there is no Hippocratic oath for architects, which would prevent anyone from designing a project that would be harmful to the inhabitants of a given site — many architecture offices would have to close shop! So I can only appeal to your conscience to ask you again not to be complicit in what you call “patronage” — note how you could not stop yourself from using quotation marks — by the Ile-de-France region. Please leave the Casbah to those who are still waiting for the physical and symbolic marks that colonialism has left on their bodies and their cities to be recognized so that they can finally fade away; those who are what the Casbah has made of them; those who live it not as a heritage of a distant UNESCO, but as a place of life, a place of memory and an urban symbol of the struggle against colonialism. These people have among them all the skills, all the knowledge and all the legitimacy to respond to the difficulties that the Casbah is going through.

I thank you again for your time.

Léopold Lambert

Jean Nouvel’s response to our open letter (received on January 11, 2018):

A la lecture de cet appel et des tweets qui l’ont accompagné, j’ai compris que l’immense majorité des signataires ne me connaissent pas, m’imaginent comme un autre, tant les suspicions sont nombreuses : colonialiste ? Affairiste ? Gentrificateur ? Incompétent ? Prédateur ? Étranger ? Profiteur ? Amnésique ?

Je me permets donc de vous exprimer qui je suis. Ce n’est pas un autoportrait. Simplement, c’est un curriculum vitae sommaire et orienté sur la situation présente.

J’ai toujours été un homme de convictions et d’engagements. Fils d’enseignants laïques, ils m’ont inculqué le sens de la droiture et de la tolérance. Ils m’ont appris aussi à exprimer sans honte mes pensées, à ne pas rester silencieux face à l’humiliation.

Dans les années 1960, admis à l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts en section architecture, j’ai été choqué par l’idéologie dominante qui marquait tous les projets : le style international, le même style pour tous les pays, pour toutes les villes, pour tous les climats, toutes les cultures… J’ai été aussi sidéré par le fait que tous les projets se développaient sans localisations, sans terrains, sans contextes… Aujourd’hui, cette idéologie a triomphé, mais je continue à la combattre. Je suis un engagé. Cet engagement est total depuis 50 ans. Tout site, tout programme, tout client a droit à une architecture spécifique. Cela s’appelle le droit à l’architecture, le droit à une pensée, à une stratégie étudiée à un moment précis pour un lieu précis. Parce que l’Histoire et la Géographie ne peuvent être oubliées.

Les engagements qui en découlent : d’abord le choix de Claude Parent et Paul Virilio comme professeurs loin des Beaux-Arts. Puis la création du mouvement Mars 76 avec des architectes de ma génération pour critiquer l’urbanisme officiel français qui appliquait la même recette pour toutes les villes françaises. Le même plan urbain basé sur un zoning brutal et sommaire caractérisé par les zones pavillonnaires, les zones d’habitations, les zones commerciales, les zones industrielles… l’ensemble complété par des gabarits et des densités obligatoires ! Après, mon engagement suivant, fut la création du syndicat de l’Architecture contre le corporatisme des architectes pour expliquer que la meilleure façon de défendre les architectes, c’était de défendre l’architecture, le droit à l’architecture. Si les architectes ne font plus d’architecture, leur rôle sociétal est annulé. La différenciation architecture et construction est cruciale. La frontière entre aménagement du territoire et urbanisme-architecture est à établir objectivement. L’aménagement du territoire est une donnée politique et stratégique qui s’impose à tous. L’urbanisme doit être considéré comme de l’architecture à grande échelle. L’organisation de l’espace et le choix des sites constructibles sont des actes architecturaux. Or, l’architecture est un art. Si les choix et les options sont catastrophiques – ce qui est souvent le cas – l’architecture ne peut plus exister. Si l’architecte, les architectes n’ont plus de vision et n’ont plus de pouvoir, c’est dramatique. Pas pour les architectes, ils se reconvertiront. C’est dramatique pour tous les habitants et habitantes, du plus jeune au plus vieux et évidemment pour l’équilibre et le plaisir de vivre tous ensemble. Le rôle de l’architecte est de défendre l’habitant. Or l’architecte n’a plus de pouvoir, ne peut plus exercer une légitime autorité pour le bien commun. Pour ces raisons ce syndicat de l’architecture fut créé. Pour ces raisons aussi mes engagements furent nombreux. Sur la mutation du centre de Paris, du Marais, des Halles, sur les polémiques publiques sur l’évolution parisienne, sur le développement de Seine Rive Gauche, puis sur le Grand Paris où les architectes avaient obtenu l’organisation d’une consultation internationale de dix équipes en 2008 pour, au-delà des schémas directeurs existants, imaginer les nouvelles stratégies de développement métropolitain. Sur tous ces sujets, des alternatives ont fait l’objet d’études urbaines. J’ai pour ma part participé et formalisé des projets sur l’ensemble d’entre eux. Ces études en ont amené d’autres à l’échelle internationale. En Espagne à Valencia, puis à la Corogne, à Barcelone, puis en Allemagne à Berlin, puis en Italie à Colle Val d’Elsa, cité historique entre Sienne et Florence, puis à Pérouse pour l’implantation du Mini-métro, puis en Suède sur les îles du centre historique de Stockholm, enfin en Chine pour l’étude d’un quartier de Shenzhen pour la création pour Tencent d’une ville de plusieurs centaines de milliers d’habitants. Autant d’exemples d’engagements sur des études lourdes et longues, invitations généralement liées à mes références et ma capacité à répondre à la question de l’intégration de programmes importants en milieu urbain historique et protégé. En relation directe avec les administrations des monuments historiques à Paris, à Lyon, à Lucerne, à Madrid, à Barcelone, à Tokyo, à Vienne, à Londres et à Manhattan.

Il est donc pour moi étonnant de lire que tant de professionnels de la profession (comme le disait si bien Jean- Luc Godard) soient contrariés du choix d’un architecte comme moi pour réfléchir sur une thématique de même ordre pour la ville d’Alger.

Mes engagements urbains ne sont pas les seuls. La question du logement social aujourd’hui cloné et étriqué est pour moi une longue bataille. La politique de Réalisation Expérimentale (Rex) sous François Mitterrand m’a permis de réaliser des logements sociaux avec 30 à 50 % de plus de surface habitable pour le même prix à Nîmes, mais aussi à Saint-Ouen et à Bezons en banlieue parisienne, démonstrations très mal vues par les bailleurs sociaux de l’époque. 15 ans après pour le centième anniversaire de la cité ouvrière de Mulhouse, j’ai été invité à étudier des habitations individuelles sociales et expérimentales, expérience que j’ai proposée de partager et de construire avec mes confrères Lacaton & Vassal, Duncan Lewis, Matthieu Poitevin et Shigeru Ban. En 2010 la bataille a continué à Bordeaux avec Mia Hagg, puis aujourd’hui à Nice et Marseille. Marseille qui fut aussi pour moi l’objet d’un engagement majeur pour pérenniser la Friche de la Belle de Mai, véritable quartier urbain culturel où des producteurs de multiples disciplines invitent des artistes de tous horizons (souvent méditerranéens), Friche que j’ai eu l’honneur de présider pendant 7 ans. L’architecte et l’architecture doivent être liés à un savoir transculturel, trans-artistique, malheureusement sous-estimé aujourd’hui dans la plupart des écoles internationales. Cette intime conviction m’a conduit à être l’architecte de la Biennale d’art de Paris pendant 15 ans dans les années 80, puis à créer la Biennale d’architecture, puis à être commissaire du Pavillon français à la Biennale de Venise (2000) sur le thème « Moins d’esthétique, plus d’éthique » pour demander l’engagement des architectes sur les scandaleuses conditions de logement dans le monde. Puis architecte du musée des civilisations du Quai Branly (2005) pour concevoir mon projet avec des artistes de ces civilisations vivantes (artistes Aborigènes), et j’ai déjà aussi rendu hommage à la culture arabe dans de nombreux projets, depuis la réalisation de l’Institut du Monde Arabe à Paris jusqu’à celles du Louvre Abu Dhabi et du Musée National du Qatar. Aujourd’hui mon implication est de formuler des propositions pour le Grand Paris et pour une politique d’élaboration des territoires français.

Je pense que la proposition de la Région Île-de-France de « mécéner » des études urbaines pour Alger et sa Casbah va dans le sens de l’Histoire. Attitude déjà initiée par l’accord d’amitié et de coopération signé en 2003 entre la Ville de Paris et la Wilaya pour la sauvegarde et l’étude du Jardin d’Essai du Hamma. L’heure est au respect mutuel et à l’amitié. Un demi-siècle après, personne n’est responsable des crimes et des erreurs des générations d’alors. J’ai toujours considéré que l’architecture doit être un don, un cadeau, un acte d’amour pour un lieu et ceux qui le vivent.

Je vais essayer, avec tous ceux qui s’impliquent avec moi dans cette étude qui débutera mi-janvier (la Wilaya d’Alger, la Région Île-de-France, l’Institut d’aménagement et d’urbanisme d’ Île-de-France, l’Agence Nationale algérienne des Secteurs sauvegardés, l’Agence Nationale algérienne de Gestion des Téalisations des Grands Projets de la Culture, l’Association des Amis d’Alger “Sauvons la Casbah”, des architectes et urbanistes algériens…), de formuler une contribution qui pourrait se développer et évoluer à l’échelle du territoire et du temps urbain et… toutes les bonnes idées sont et seront les bienvenues.

Jean Nouvel Janvier 2019

The post Algiers’ Casbah: Jean Nouvel’s Response to Our Open Letter appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Léopold Lambert – Paris on January 29, 2019
If you enjoy articles of the blog, have a look at The Funambulist Magazine!

July 1961: the Algerian Revolution is almost seven years old and, although it has lost the war at a military level — the two last years of the military offensive led by General Maurice Challe has killed 26,000 soldiers of the Algerian National Liberation Army (ALN) — it is close from the final victory against French colonialism, as it has managed to give to its struggle an international dimension. No more than three months earlier, the four French generals Challe, Salan, Jouhaud, and Zeller had taken over Algiers, deposing the French delegate to the government Jean Morin, and the Minister of transportation Robert Buron (who had the bad idea of making a visit to Algeria that day) on April 21. The next morning, they announced their intention to lead the military to invade France, take power and implement policies to keep the French rule in Algeria forever. In reaction, the French government declares the state of emergency (which will cover the entire end of the Revolution and beyond, and be used to provide the conditions of the October 17, 1961 massacre of 300 Algerians in Paris) and the French President, General De Gaulle (who himself came back to power after another coup d’etat in Algeria three years earlier) declares to apply the Article 16 of the Constitution that was drafted for him in the summer of 1958, which gives him full power to govern for a time that only him gets to decide. Meanwhile, tanks are set up in front of the French Parliament (despite the fact that Article 16 had just made it obsolete) and a machine gun is set up in the salons of the presidential palace. The coup is however a failure and a few days later, the generals surrender.

The state of emergency and Article 16 however remain (the state of emergency until September 30, 1963 and Article 16 until September 29, 1961), thus making 1961 France a regime hardly distinguishable from a dictature. It is in these conditions that the De Gaulle government negotiates in Evian, France (whose mayor was assassinated a few months earlier by the settler terrorist organization OAS) with the Algerian Republic Provisional Government (GPRA) in order to define the future of Algeria. Although France has always claimed that in such a scenario, its first priority would be to protect the European settler population, as well as the Jewish and Muslim Algerians who would like to remain French citizens, the main object of debate is that of the Algerian Sahara, which contains the precious oil and natural gas exploited by France, as well as the site of the French military nuclear testing (which will remain there four years beyond the Algerian independence before being transferred to another French colonized territory, Tahiti-Nui).

It is in these conditions that De Gaulle commissions French parliamentary Alain Peyrefitte to consider scenarios of a partition of Algeria in which French interests will remain. In a report that was shortly later published as a book, Peyrefitte thus imagine six hypotheses of partition in a program that he (and many with him) candidly calls an “Israelization of Algeria.” The idea would be to declare the Sahara southern region a “neutral” territory, while the populated north of Algeria would be divided between the new independent Algerian state and another one gathering the European settlers and Algerians who would like to remain French, closely affiliated to France. Although Peyrefitte systematically refers to Israel and its successes (!) throughout his report, he writes that he would prefer a “French-Muslim Lebanon” than “a French Israel” — he indeed considers the hostility of Israel’s neighbors as somehow not desirable for this new state! The most limited scenario would consists in two French ‘islands’ around the cities of Oran and Bone (current Anaba), where the settlers are in majority, while the most extensive one would cover the entire northwestern part of Algeria, all the way to Algiers, which is imagined as a shared city in all hypotheses — remember, we are in the summer of 1961, exactly when the Berlin wall starts to be built.

In the end, this project of partition of Algeria will be quickly disregarded (provisions on the Sahara will however not); perhaps they were even meant for De Gaulle to put pressure on the GPRA during the negotiations. However, this project provides at least two teaching points. The first one concerns the colonial project in general, and French colonialism in Algeria in particular. What this partition project demonstrates is the sustained attempt for colonial powers to trace lines in maps according to their interests (Peyrefitte’s maps all show the location of oil and gas pipelines), regardless of the impact of their materialization ‘on the ground.’ In her book Mirages de la carte: L’invention de l’Algérie coloniale (Mirages of the Map: The Invention of Colonial Algeria), French historian Hélène Blais illustrate how the French military cartographic survey of the Algerian Sahara after that the colonization of the coastal territory had been more or less secured in mid-19th century, was simultaneous with the trace of line-based borders to define Algeria as a precise colonial territory — regardless of the fact that, to the exception of Italian-colonized Libya, all territories beyond these lines were already or soon-to-be under French colonial sovereignty too. In a desert where no element suggests the presence nor the necessity for sharp thick-less borders, such a colonial enterprise appears in its whole absurdity and violence. The later dreadful lines traced in 1916 by British Colonel Mark Sykes and French diplomat François Georges-Picot splitting the Levant in two areas dominated by the French colonial empire (Syria and Lebanon) and the British one (Iraq, Kowait, Jordan, Palestine) are perhaps even more blind to the violence of their arbitrarily dividing borders.

The second teaching point consists in seeing how this rhetoric of “israelization” allows an additional retrospective reading of the Zionist project — also the alternative vision of Zionism remaining only a project much like the French one. What the 1961 partition of Algeria project (13 years after the violent creation of the State of Israel) shows us in what very few now would not call its absurdity and its violence, is that the 1947 United Nations partition plan of colonized Palestine between its Jewish population (and the hundreds of thousands who will later become settlers in Palestine) and its Arab population was in no less (if not more, given that the French plan would probably have not intensified its settler colonial policies towards the newly created state) absurd and violent. Furthermore, the UN plan also remained a project, while the actual partition that resulted from the 1948 Nakba (initiated weeks before the end of the British mandate) violently evicted 800,000 Palestinians from Palestine, without them having been able to return since then.

Through this final attempt to keep a colonial grasp on Algeria, the last symptom of denial that the Algerian Revolution had overcome, France thus replayed the game it had been playing for two centuries to the detriment of millions of colonized populations in Africa, South and East Asia, the Caribbeans, the Americas, the Levant, as well as the Pacific. This partition of Algeria project could now be read as the colonial farce that it did not realize it was when it was designed; yet, the consequences of other plans of the kind, and the sustained structures of colonialism (whether in the dependences manufactured for the West African former colonies, or in the daily experience of the sub-citizens of France in its so-called “overseas territories” and its internal white-supremacist society) prevent us from not taking seriously what this document envisions. While the French colonial state could not imagine a fully independent Algeria and pathologically continued to fundamentally differentiates the Natives from the Europeans, the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) had been cleared from their very first declaration that any person living in Algeria who would like to remain there after the independence will become an Algerian citizen, equal in rights with the rest of the citizenry. Admittedly, after eight years of a war that saw over a million of Algerians being killed by the French army, the settlers, and the harkis (Algerians fighting for the French army/police), the circumstances were not ideal for this process of desettlerization to occur and, in the end, very few former settlers became and remained Algerian citizens. Yet, this FLN vision being literally a decolonial project in contrast with the French partition project, it remains for us a horizon for which we must fight in other circumstances.

The research for this text is part of an on-going book project entitled Etats d’urgence: Une histoire spatiale du continuum colonial français (States of Emergency: A Spatial History of the French Colonial Continuum) to be published by Lux éditeur.

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Weaponized Architecture: Towards a Revolutionary Practice and Non-Practice of the Discipline. Lecture created for the Architectural Association’s lecture series “New Canonical Histories” curated by Manijeh Verghese. London on February 28, 2019.

Architecture is the discipline that organizes bodies in space. Through this definition, Léopold Lambert attempts to demonstrate that the built environment has a propensity to materialize the political programmes of the dominant order: as nothing easier than the extrusion of a line to enforce an arbitrary national border or apartheid wall. Inversely, it is much more difficult and requires much more effort to design insurrectional or resistive architectures that do not shy away from the part of violence they also embody.

Index ///

• Introduction (brief overview of LL’s work and The Funambulist)
• Chapter 1: “The Wall: Crystallizing Architecture’s Violence” (starts at 8:13)
• Chapter 2: “The Corridor: Politics of Narrowness” (starts at 17:55)
• Chapter 3: “The Key: Turning a Door into a Wall (and vice versa)” (starts at 24:00)
• Manifesto: “Towards a Revolutionary Practice and Non-Practice of Architecture” (see below)
• Questions from the audience (starts at 38:18)

Manifesto: “Towards a Revolutionary Practice and Non-Practice of Architecture” ///

Architecture practices and architects cited in the manifesto (many more could have been featured on it): Architects Designers Planners for Social Responsibility, Tings Chak, Lori Brown, Forensic Architecture/Forensic Oceanography, Olivia Ahn, Ahmad al Aqra, Michael Rakowitz, Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative, Aman Iwan, Recetas Urbanas, Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency, Sahra Collective, Arakawa and Madeline Gins.

When they’ll come to us to design and optimize their prisons, or even lure us into thinking that we could somehow, make better conditions of life for those who have been forcefully surrounded by walls, we will actively non-practice architecture in telling them that we’ll only sleep when we will have abolished all prisons (cf. Architects Designers Planners for Social Responsibility).

When they’ll come to us, saying that we need to use our skills as architects to participate to transform the deadly colonial border industrial complex, to make it more humane, we will instead use our skills to make evident all the ways through which architecture constitutes one of the most effective weapons of this complex (cf. Tings Chak, Lori Brown, Forensic Architecture/Forensic Oceanography.

When they’ll come to us with manuals of how to unfold deadly police and military violence on the bodies explained through an architectural language, we will retaliate with the same language to describe to doulas how women who have been forcefully surrounded by walls can safely give birth in an environment of death (cf. Olivia Ahn).

When they’ll come to us with their grants, awards and cultural capital for fetishizing and depoliticizing the many proletarian self-built neighborhoods of the world, we will talk to them about the Algerian shantytowns of Paris during the Revolution, or the Palestinian refugee camps of the West Bank and Gaza; show them how architecture can be a weapon against state violence as long as architects accept not to be a part of it (cf. Nanterre, Dheisheh, Ahmad al Aqra).

When they’ll come to us to be the name and the face of necolonial projects and other operations of dispossession, displacement, and destructions disguised behind words such as renovation, rehabilitation, or revitalization, we will tell them that we refuse to be a part of their schemes, that we boycott them (cf. Michael Rakowitz).

When they’ll come to us and explain that the predatory actions of the males of our offices are not as terrifying and traumatizing as they actually are, that these are individuals’ misbehaviors and not structures of power, or that we have simply invented the very existence of these actions, we will deafen them with the sound of our voices and topple their grand efigies to the ground (cf. Feminist Art and Architecture Collaborative).

When they’ll come to us, telling us that the exploitative conditions of the workers in charge of building the grand dream we’ve been trained to imagine, are not our own responsibility, we will descend our ivory tower and humble ourselves, learning the crafts and efforts that such constructions necessitate (cf. Aman Iwan).

When they’ll come to us, telling us that everyone take their parts in developing the city, that “there is no alternative,” that neighborhoods are meant to see their residents change, that we are not responsible, we will call out their speculative racist and classist projects and turn the law against them to manifest the right to housing for all (cf. Recetas Urbanas).

When they’ll come to us, asking us to build in occupied territory and tell us that history books will only retain the quality of our designs not the violation of international legislation those constitute, we will instead build schools and cultural buildings in the camps of those who were made refugees for life by them (cf. Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency).

When they’ll come to us, telling us that the wall is an architecture of security, deployed against those we terrorize calling “terrorists,” we will reply that the wall is an architecture of apartheid and we will take our part of the imaginative efforts that envision a future where they no longer hold any dominant power (cf. Sahra Collective).

When they’ll come to us to design architectures for and by the white cis-male able bourgeois bodies of the world, we will instead conceive boundless worlds that refuse to presume what a body is and can do, we will talk to them about the joy of intensively living as a body, rather than being contained into one (cf. Arakawa & Madeline Gins). Like Aimé Césaire, we will stare at them and tell them “Blue-Eyed Architect, I defy you […] who crowned you? During what night did you exchange compass for dagger?” (And the Dogs Were Silent, 1958) and then, more calmly, we will read them Madeline Gins’ “All Men Are Sisters”:

“There simply could not have been a woman who would have said, ‘Left side’ ‘right side’ then stuck to it. For a woman, it is a question of at least seven sides, at least one for every hue. Such subtlety contributes to the subtle difference. One thing men haven’t realized is that unlike them (all men are mortal), women do not die —This makes all the difference — although some women, having been brow-beaten by sheer syllogistic brawn, have at times pretended.

Most women do not look like themselves; although many women do assume the form of ‘woman;’ some are men, others gas and electricity, and still others are indistinguishable. Often, being constructed of living material, women are a volatile force in society and as such dangerous […].” Madeline Gins, What the President Will Say and Do, New York: Station Hill, 1984.

The post Weaponized Architecture: Towards a Revolutionary Practice and Non-Practice of the Discipline: Lecture by Léopold Lambert at the AA appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Léopold Lambert – Paris on July 18, 2018

Dear readers,

For the first time, I am making a call aiming at hiring two free-lancers (potential interns may apply too) to work part-time for The Funambulist! Following is what I hope to be a precise-enough description of the researched profiles for these two significantly different positions. The Funambulist is a structure with a small budget and staff but, as I often argued, it is crucial for me that the ethical standard of the magazine’s production be as high as its contents; as such, if you believe that this call contains unfair components, feel free to let us know:

FIRST POSITION:
Part-time assistant working from the office in Paris ///

• 12 to 14 hours per week, 4 afternoons a week, for at least 6 months starting the end of August (depending on the applicant’s schedule, location, and physical ability to access the 5th-floor office, some of these weekly hours of work could be done remotely).
• the job consists mostly in the management of the magazine’s logistics: processing orders, and subscriptions, organization of the files, email exchanges with subscribers, bookstores, and institutions, as well as attending to part of the online communication on social networks.
• a smaller part of the job will consist in taking part in the editorial process and decisions, as it is understood that this job is also an opportunity for the applicant to learn about the making and sustaining a politically-driven magazine.
• the applicant should be enthusiastic, trustworthy, and rigorous. They should also have an acute knowledge of the contents of the magazine and its editorial line.
• the applicant should speak fluent English; skills in French, or in any other language constitute a significant plus but are not required.
• skills in software such as illustrator, photoshop, indesign, or premiere/imovie constitute a significant plus, but are not required.
• the job is paid 600 euros per month (specific skills regarding the communication part of the job, in particular video-editing, could increase this rate).
• interviews for the position will happen throughout August, and will take place at The Funambulist office in Paris.

SECOND POSITION:
Part-time sales-representative working remotely ///

• this mission will consist in defining and implementing strategies to increase the magazine’s reach and incomes internationally. This includes (although not exclusively) the increase of institutional subscriptions and potential new readers.
• the applicant is expected to spend at least 10 hours a week working on the mission.
• the mission does not require to be situated in a particular geography of the world — the access to an already-established network of contacts constitutes however a significant plus.
• the applicant should have a form of training in the domain of sales, as well as experience in the publication world, and will have to work within the ethical framework defined for the mission.
• the applicant should be self-motivated, inventive, and responsive. Importantly, they should also have an acute knowledge of the contents of the magazine and its editorial line.
• the selected applicant will be paid 600 euros per month in addition of commissions on sales to be negotiated.
• interviews for the position will happen throughout August, and will happen through video conference.

All applicant may apply with a cover letter and a CV (the former being more important than the latter) sent at info@thefunambulist.net. Selected applicants will be invited to interview for one of the two positions. All applicants will receive an answer, but they might need to exercise patience.

Thank you very much.

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Léopold Lambert – Paris on April 23, 2019
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On March 25, 2019, architecture news platform Dezeen published an article entitled “Architects who don’t pay interns “shouldn’t be given prestigious commissions” says designer who revealed Ishigami internships” that related a story many in the field of architecture know all too well: a young white designer applied to an internship at Junya Ishigami’s architecture office in Tokyo. The response from the Japanese firm consisted in a list of exploitative conditions for one to be an intern in their office, the main ones consisting in the absence of any salary as well as intensive hours of work (11AM-midnight). The focus of the article on Japanese architecture firms (that tend to be more explicit about their exploitative terms than their western counterparts that nonetheless share similar practices) was a little unsettling as was the idea that what was at stake was “prestigious commissions” more than dignifying labor conditions, but its general topic was legitimate: whether for internships or for the amount of extra hours worked by so many within the field of architecture, unpaid labor and other exploitative conditions must be addressed and fought in a coordinated front.

Although this article was certainly not exhuming something unknown, it could have contributed to a healthy debate about how to organize against the many forms of violence that architecture offices hosts — exploitative labor being one, racism and misogyny being two other predominant ones. Instead, the designer whose experience was related in the article shared his experience on social media using the two following hashtags: #MakeArchitectureGreatAgain and #ArchiSlavery. While the first one was addressed by several people for its connection with the violence of the current U.S. President’s policies — most likely, the designer does not approve of these policies, but the possibility of playing with a slogan that polices, incarcerates and kills says a lot about privilege — the second one is even more revealing about the overwhelming whiteness that characterizes architecture as a discipline. The designer was subsequently publicly and privately called out by some people including friends Elise Misao Hunchuck and Dubravka Sekulic to which followed the usual manifestation of denial, upset, and the “agree to disagree” of those who have the luxury to live in a world where disagreement with others does not constitute a life-threatening situation.

I have no interest in specifically citing this person here; although they should be held accountable for his public statement, singling them out would prevent to read the collective responsibility of his words. And clearly, the idea that unpaid internships is somehow comparable with slavery seems to go much beyond them and be well accepted within architecture as a field, as we can see through a recently published (again on Dezeen) tribune by London-based established architect Sean Griffiths, entitled with a quote of his text: “The master and slave mentality remains firmly embedded in architectural culture” (April 11, 2019). In it, Griffiths shares with us his dilemma when he confronts architectures he admires while knowing that they have been produced thanks to unpaid labor! Reflecting on the state of the profession, he affirms “As Friedrich Nietszche would have recognised, the master and slave mentality remains firmly embedded in architectural culture.” The post-mortem approval of the philosopher notwithstanding, it is baffling to see that this sentence represented so much not a problem for the editors, that they decided to turn it into the title of the column.

So no, dear Dezeen and Sean Griffiths, unpaid internships in architecture offices are not comparable to slavery — it makes me cringe to associate them in a sentence, even a negative one. Slavery is a European industrial racist machine of kidnapping, transcontinental displacement, imprisoning, enforced labor, and systematic death of 13 millions of African people in a settler colonial context, which still affects the life conditions of millions of Black people today. Furthermore, this machine would have never been possible without the active and willing contributions of architects designing boats, barracks, plantations, and prisons. And if we are to speak about slave labor, it was used by settler colonial architects to build the monuments and infrastructures of entire cities like Washington D.C. as Mabel Wilson demonstrates extensively in her work.

The dilemma of the discipline should therefore not be whether we can admire architecture produced within exploitative conditions, but first and foremost to recognize, study, and address how the global system of colonial, racist, and capitalist violence could simply not operate the way it does without the active contribution of architects. This is true for the physical enforcement of this system’s programs that architecture materializes (citing only a few: prisons, colonies, police stations, gentrifying housing units, gated communities, militarized/exclusive public space…), but also for the exploited labor of construction workers in most geographical contexts (not just in the Gulf or China!), which has to be fought at the same time if not before the exploitative conditions at work within architecture offices.

The post On Architecture’s Implacable Whiteness: European Architects Compare Unpaid Internships to Slavery appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Léopold Lambert – Paris on May 3, 2019
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Tomorrow, May 4, 2019 is the 30th anniversary of the assassination of the President and Vice-President of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwéné Yeiwéné. It is an understatement to say that at an international scale, they are not the most well-known anti-colonial leaders. Whether or not this lack of visibility is detrimental to the Kanak struggle towards self-determination (Kanaky-New-Caledonia still being under French sovereignty) is not an assessment that is mine to make, but this lack of knowledge of their struggle is detrimental to all who are fighting against settler colonialism in the world. Nothing worse than the moralization of knowledge and ignorance however — I’m thinking of clickbait article titles in the form of “that thing no one [who is this “no one?”] is talking about and that should outrage you” here — this is not the point of this short text. Its goal consists in giving a more precise contextualization of their assassination, which is usually characterized as having been committed by an unknown more radical Kanak activist who feel betrayed by the signature of the Matignon-Oudinot Agreements a bit less than a year earlier. This characterization constitutes one more obfuscation of the Kanak self-determination history. Although writing more precisely about this particular event that ended the Kanak insurrection of the 1980s (1984-1989) would require that just as much precision be used to describe the four first years of this anti-colonial insurrection, I’m hoping that my forthcoming book about the history of the French state of emergency (in which Kanaky takes a third of the contents) will do just that in a relatively near future.

On May 4, 1989, the three main personalities of the Provisional Government of Kanaky (a provisional government that has been criminalized by the French right wing in power, notably by French Ministry of Interior, the infamous Charles Pasqua), Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Yeiwéné Yeiwéné, and Léopold Jorédié travel from the Grande Terre (the largest island of the Kanak archipelago) to the atoll Ouvéa, where, exactly a year earlier, 19 Kanak militants were slaughtered by the French army — although principles of citizenship constitute an illusion in the colonial context, we still ought to state that these militants were French citizens — after they took 22 police officers in hostage two weeks earlier following the occupation of a police station (a common activist practice during the 1980s insurrection) that turned ugly when a young police officer started shooting at the militants. As many testimonies attest, the take could have been solved through negotiation, but it happened between the two rounds of France’s 1988 Presidential election where sitting socialist President Francois Mitterrand was facing his right-wing Prime Minister, Jacques Chirac. The latter wanting to show implacable strength and the former not wanting to take any risk that could cost him his reelection, the assault by the army was given a go and on May 5, 1988, the Kanak militants were killed; at least three of them, including the group leader, Alphonse Dianou, were coldly executed (see the detailed investigation by Jean-Guy Gourson). The 18 other militants were Wenceslas Lavelloi, Edouard Lavelloi, Jean Lavelloi, Bouama Dao, Samuel Dao, Philippo Nine, Nicolas Nine, Michel Wadjeno, Donatien Wadjeno, Nicodeme Teinboueone, Jean-Luc Madjele, Séraphin Ouckewen, Zéphirin Kella, Martin Haiwe, Patrick Amossa Wiana, Vincent Daoume and Samuel Wamo. 

This historical episode is, sadly, the most well-known fact about Kanaky by French society; what is less known is how the link between the assassination of Tjibaou and Yeiwéné and the colonial violence of the French army goes much beyond the fact that it happened during the ceremony that ends the mourning of those who were killed. In fact, the Kanak activist who killed the two leaders and was then himself killed by a body guard — one must realize the extraordinary upset of a violent death in a Kanak tribe to understand how this third killing should never be minimized — is Djubelly Wea, former pastor who found his political ideology in the Liberation Theology, elected-member of the regional council (sitting immediately to the right of Tjibaou), activist for the United Front of the Kanak Liberation (FULK), and member of the tribe of Gossanah from where the militants who occupied the police station in April 1988 also were. When the French army invaded the tribe to set their headquarters in the search of the hostages, he was the one who addressed the French officers and when he refused to negotiate before the army left the tribe, French General Vidal (who used to be a paratrooper in the French bloody suppression of the Algerian Revolution between 1954 and 1962) is said to have declared that “France declares war against the Kanak people.” Wea was arrested and several men of the tribe were tortured by the French army to obtain the location of the hostage takers. During the first day of his arrest, Wea was also subjected to a humiliating and violent treatment. He and the group of other militants arrested were then deported to France and jailed there — this deportation is rendered even less historically neutral when one knows that New Caledonia had served as a penal colony for French and Algerian prisoners during the second half of the 19th century.

The leaders of the FLNKS are often blamed for not having done enough during the hostage take and that they share a certain responsibility in the massacre. Presented by French right-wing leaders as “terrorists,” it is however not obvious what they could possibly have done to deescalate the situation. But the historical episode that will create a real chasm between Kanak activists intervened a month and half later, on June 26, 1988, when Tjibaou and Yeiwéné (despite his initial disagreement) formerly signed the Matignon Agreement (and on August 20, 1988 the Oudinot Agreement) between the French government (that recently came back under the control of Mitterrand), the RPCR (the main “caldoche” i.e. settler Caledonian political party), and the FLNKS. The Agreements incorporate an amnesty law that allows the arrested Kanak militants including Wea to be freed, but that also prevents any official investigation on the Ouvéa massacre and tortures. They also imposed a referendum about the independence of Kanaky-New-Caledonia before 1998 (it however won’t happen before 2018) and establish three new regions, two of which where Kanak leaders wouldn’t have much trouble being elected (the North Province and the Islands Province). Tjibaou, who had fought tirelessly (or rather, as if he was not tired when archives show the toll that the struggle had on his body) and continuously for the last decade, saw in these agreements the possibility of regrouping towards the independence in a middle-term future (a few years earlier, it had seemed achievable at a much shorter term), but probably more importantly, of stopping the killings — in December 1984, it was ten members of his own tribe, including two of his brothers, who had been slaughtered by settlers, and in January 1985, the French military had assassinated the very charismatic Minister of Security of the Provisional Government of Kanaky, Eloi Machoro.

The FLNKS is fundamentally divided by the signature of these agreements, as well as by the well-known picture of Tjibaou shaking hands with Jacques Lafleur, the president of the RPCR — a photo on which the French government, although a signatory of these agreements, is absent as one more manifestations of them wanting to appear as a fair referee between the Indigenous activists and the French settlers, when in fact, it is the responsible entity for the settler colonial structures that operate in Kanaky-New-Caledonia. A particularly infuriating dimension of this responsibility is the complete lack of care the French society demonstrates regarding its overseas colonies as proven by the referendum organized in France to ratify the agreements: 80% voted yes but only 37% of the electors went to vote on November 6, 1988.

Several French settlers and police officers were killed during the 1980s Kanak insurrection; however, the assassination of its two leaders constitutes the only occurrence of a premeditated killing by a Kanak. Some stories even state that the premeditation was shared by Tjibaou, Yeiwéné and Jorédié themselves who knew what was waiting for them in Ouvéa.

The deadly encounter of May 4, 1989 has therefore a lot to teach us about the political history that preceded it, but also about the one that followed, in particular the reconciliation process between the three tribes that led to a coutume du pardon (forgiveness custom) in 2004. I am nowhere close to be the right person to describe what is and how important is the Kanak coutume, and thus won’t define it any more precisely than the ensemble of gestures that ritualize and enact meaning in the relationship between two people or groups of people. The 2004 forgiveness custom saw most of the members of the Gossanah tribe leaving Ouvéa to Maré (where Yeiwéné’s tribe of Tadine is located) and to Tiendanite on the Grande Terre (Tjibaou’s tribe) to procedurally ask and receive forgiveness in an extremely strong moment of collective emotions. Although there is something profoundly reductive in trying to extend the meaning of such an event to radically different contexts, but I cannot not see in this coutume the perfect example of restorative justice, far from the materialization of punitive justice, its sentences, its jails, and its violence.

Even though Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwéné Yeiwéné were assassinated by a fellow Kanak leader, their death is the French government’s responsibility, since colonialism tainted the entire nature of this deadly encounter (all the way to the gun used for it, which was taken from the occupied police station the year earlier). This is also why the reconcialition process that followed, much more than the subsequent agreements — the Nouméa Agreement that still defines the conditions of French sovereignty in Kanaky-New-Caledonia today was signed in 1998 — should be seen as an anti-colonial practice insofar that it dismantles the grief, anger, and division directly produced by colonial violence. May we live to witness such a custom enacted between white settlers and Kanak tribes in an independent Kanaky-New-Caledonia.

The post 30 Years After Their Assassination, a Tribute to Indigenous Kanak Leaders Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yeiwéné Yeiwéné appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Dear reader, during the entire month of June, enjoy twelve of our “Politics of Space and Bodies” issues for half the regular price here!

#20 SETTLER COLONIALISM IN TURTLE ISLAND

Settler Colonialism in Turtle Island is a first ever issue of The Funambulist that was guest-edited by Turtle Island Indigenous scholars and activists Melanie K. Yazzie and Nick Estes. It proposes several facets of Indigenous struggles in Turtle Island. Most of them depict Native lives in spaces that are not the reservations where the colonial narrative usually situates them. Whether in large cities such as Los Angeles or Saskatoon or settler border towns in the periphery of reservations the urban dimension of the first half of the dossier is omnipresent.

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Contributors: Gabriel Varghese & Akanksha Mehta, Maria Khristine Alvarez, Margarida Nzuzi Waco & Emil Madsen Aaby, João Gabriell, Mapping Indigenous LA, Jaskiran Dhillon, Melanie K. Yazzie & Nick Estes, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Joel Waters, Palestinian Youth Movement, Leya Tess, Elsa Hoover, Geraldene Blackgoat, David Eslahi.

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#19 THE SPACE OF ABLEISM

This volume is dedicated to a political struggle that has been too seldom addressed throughout the pages of past issues and that nevertheless very much mobilizes “the politics of space and bodies” that The Funambulist proposes to discuss: the fight against ableism. Just like structural racism should be addressed through considerations about white supremacy, and homophobia through considerations about heteronormativity, we should not consider disabled bodies without the system that creates such a category in the first place, namely ableism.

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The printed format of this 19th issue is provided with a limited-edition supplement entitled “The Architecture of Sex: Three Case Studies Beyond the Panopticon,” by Paul B. Preciado. We still have some copies left!

Contributors: Ayano Ginoza, Colin Prescod, Nathalie Muchamad, Beth Hughes & Platon Issaias, Natalie Spagnuolo, No Anger, Kengné Téguia, Sarah Gunawan, Jos Boys, David Gissen, Farah Saleh & Adrienne Hart, Lucy Satzewich, Brian Lee.

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#18 CARTOGRAPHY & POWER

Cartography & Power is the eighteenth issue of The Funambulist. Just like architecture, cartography does not constitute a neutral discipline that can be equally used to implement either state violence or resistive endeavors. Cartography is inherently an instrument of power and, as such, it has the propensity to facilitate the violence of military and administrative operations. All contributors to this issue begin with this axiom and seek for methods of mapping that can serve political struggles mobilizing against the dominant order.

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Contributors: Caren Kaplan, Moad Musbahi, Ahmad Barclay, Patrick Jaojoco, Rasheedah Phillips, Lucía Jalón Oyarzun, Bouchra Khalili, Elise Misao Hunchuck, Piper Bernbaum, Fabiana Ex-Souza, Lebogang Mokoena, Irmgard Emmelhainz.

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#17 WEAPONIZED INFRASTRUCTURE

This issue’s articles describing the role of infrastructure in colonial projects in Canada, Singapore, Central Asia, Kurdistan, and Colombia illustrate such a strategy. Other contributions describe the geopolitics of narrowness materialized by the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aden, and the Strait of Hormuz in the maritime globalized capitalist project, the story of Soviet infrastructural remains in Southern Armenia, the construction of a notion of “infrastructure of intimacy” in the context of the Israeli destruction of Palestinian homes, and the project of rehabilitation of the toxified Euphrates River between Syria and Iraq.

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Contributors: Deborah Cowen, Charmaine Chua, Solveig Suess, Begüm Adalet, Zannah Mæ Matson, Laleh Khalili, Rouzbeh Akhbari & Felix Kalmenson, Sabrien Amrov, Malak Al-Faraj & Leyla Oz, Nay Saysourinho, Chanelle Adams, Rami Abdel Moula, Dubravka Sekulic.

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#16 PROLETARIAN FORTRESSES

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Proletarian Fortresses is an issue that proposes a resolutely political reading of self-built neighborhoods, appropriated architectures, refugee camps, and worker quarters. Constructed against the humanitarian and romanticizing orientalist narratives, it insists that these urban forms exist in the tension of what they are prevented to be by various embodiment of state violence and what they succeed in being thanks to their residents’ daily resistance.

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Contributors: Jaime A. Alves, Soraya El Kahlaoui, L’Uzine, Ahmed al Shanti, Ahmad Alaqra, Sharon Lam, Desirée Valadares, Ana Naomi de Sousa & António Brito Guterres, Henry Shah,Majed Abdulsamad, Jun Seong Ahn, Maria Isabel Carrasco, & Haochen Yang, Aleksander Nowak,Ida Helen Skogstad, Ula Iruretagoiena & Ibon Salaberria, Parsa Sajid, Marisol LeBrón & Javier Arbona.

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#12 RACIALIZED INCARCERATION

This issue demonstrates that incarceration is one of the horizons of processes of racialization and that architecture is an unsurpassable instrument of its enforcement. Through historical examples (concentration camps of Romani people in France, prison cities of Japanese and Japanese American people in the United States, an Aborigene prison in Australia) and contemporary ones (US prison industrial complex, immigrant detention centers in Canada, Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon), it intends to illustrate how the violence of colonial and structural forms of racism endure time and materialize in space.

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Contributors: Nicolás Vidal, Sarover Zaidi, Suzannah Victoria Beatrice Henty, Lynne Horiuchi, Desirée Valadares, Mohamad-Ali Nayel, Michelle Bui, S.K. Hussan, Orisanmi Burton, Stella Ioannidou, & Zachary White.

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#11 DESIGNED DESTRUCTIONS

The eleventh issue is dedicated to the precise and strategic political order behind the apparent disorder of debris and ruin in various geographical and historical contexts. The current situations of systematic destruction historically and currently experienced by Syrian and Palestinian populations provides a core to this issue to which are added accounts of the Uyghur, Tamil, and Black American struggles respectively in Xinjiang, Eelam, and the United States, as well as historical descriptions of survival bodies in Sarajevo and monument desecration in West Africa and the Carribeans.

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Contributors: Tarek Lakhrissi, Tentative Collective, Helene Kazan, Bhakti Shringarpure, Lynda Zein, P. Reyhan, Edith Roux, Alicia Olushola Ajayi, Armina Pilav, Eyal Weizman, Sinthujan Varatharajah, Eva Schreiner.

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#9 ISLANDS

This issue attempts to amplify the voices of indigenous narratives, as well as on non-colonial protocols of passage on these islands, like in the cases of displaced persons in the Mediterranean Sea or the Indian Ocean. Whether they are the settings of decolonizing and demilitarizing struggles or of the economization and incarceration of displaced lives or places that even face the threat of absolute disappearance, the narratives voiced in this issue are simultaneously asymmetric regarding the forces against which they are mobilized, and united in a continuously reaffirmed urgency that always sooner or later topples these forces.

Contributors: Fathima Cader, Elise Hunchuck, K. Kamakaoka’ilima Long, Françoise Vergès, Hamid Mokaddem, Lizzie Yarina, Melissa Fernández Arrigoitia, Wendy Matsumura, Greg Barton, Alison Mountz, Embassy for the Displaced, Kamil Dalkir, Rosa Rogina, Christina Varvia.

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#8 POLICE

This eighth issue of The Funambulist Magazine can be read in continuity with Issue 04 (March-April 2016), which was focused on carceral environments. Its axiomatic editorial line is resolutely the same: just as there cannot be “better prisons,” there cannot be “better police,” at least not within the logics through which they are currently operating in a majority of the world’s societies.
Contributors: Katherine Merriman, Ather Zia, Nick Estes, Jehan Bseiso, Christina Heatherton, Susana Durão, Sinthujan Varatharajah, Mathieu Rigouste, Jacob Burns, Whitney Hansley, and Joséphine Larere.

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#7 HEALTH STRUGGLES

Health Struggles is dedicated to health-related political struggles. Its editorial line does not approach the concept of health merely as that which prevents a body from dying but, rather, as the most incarnate level of politics since it tend to mobilize the very biologies of the bodies it takes for object. For this same reason, it is also a domain where the norm shows the highest degrees of crystalization in its stigmatization of some bodies over others. This issue attempts to disrupt the normative conception of what a functioning body is.

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Contributors: Alex Shams, Christina Yi, Zahra Ali, Merve Bedir, Blanca Pujals, Lori Brown, Banu Bargu, Che Gossett, Noémie Aulombard, Momoyo Homma, Piergianna Mazzocca, and Giulia Tomasello.

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#2 SUBURBAN-GEOGRAPHIES

Suburban politics are specific to each country and city, and this issue only examines some of them. However, they all share a geographical distance from city centers whether forced on their inhabitants or chosen by them. Both of these distances are profoundly political, and their urban and architectural materializations require a thorough examination of the way they interact with the bodies they host.

Contributors: Hacène Belmessous, Tina Grandinetti, Angelo Fick, Antonádia Borges, Olivia Ahn, Karen Tongson, Adel Tincelin, Alejandro Cantera López and Henri Bony.

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#1 MILITARIZED CITIES

The first issue is dedicated to militarized cities, arguing that the case studies presented here are only extreme incarnations of the collaboration between military and urban planning logics: each city carries in itself a certain degree of militarization. It was conceived a few weeks after a state of emergency had been declared on the city of Baltimore, targeting in particular the Black neighborhoods of the city. Such states of emergency, whether in the United States or elsewhere, are manifest of how a city, through its architecture, which organizes bodies in space, already contained most of the physical components for its urban space to be militarized.

Contributors: Mona Fawaz, Mona Harb & Ahmad Gharbieh, Sadia Shirazi, Mohamed Elshahed, Demilit (Javier Arbona, Bryan Finoki & Nick Sowers), Nora Akawi, Philippe Theophanidis, James Martin, Zulaikha Ayub, Maeve Elder & Ylan Vo.

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July 3, 2019, 7PM Columbia Global Centers, 4 Rue de Chevreuse, 75006 Paris. 
For the launch of its 24th issue, Futurisms (July-August 2019), The Funambulist invites New York-based historian Robyn C. Spencer and panafrorevolutionary collective Cases Rebelles to reflect on Black political imaginaries. See fb event.

After a short presentation of The Funambulist’s 24th issue by founding editor Léopold Lambert, Robyn C. Spencer will present how and why the Black Panther Party grappled with the imperatives of global solidarity and anti-imperialist activism. From International solidarity groups based in Europe, to an International section in Algeria, to criticism of the US war in Vietnam, the Panthers mobilized blackness as a potent force for anti-racist and anti-capitalist action. They expanded the boundaries of the US based Black political imaginary and became part of channels and circuits of political engagement that are imperative to consider at this time of the rise of the global right. Cases Rebelles members will then talk about how their transnational stance to their belief in the pivotal oppositional power of the margins, from their ethos of resourcefulness to the influence that popular Caribbean cultures had on them, they will reflect on what fueled their actions, their aspirations for change, for political transformation, and discuss how they envision revolutionary Black futurity.

Robyn Spencer is a historian who focuses on Black social protest after World War II, urban and working-class radicalism, and gender. In 2018-2019 she is Women’s and Gender Studies Visiting Endowed Chair at Brooklyn College, CUNY. Her book The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland was published in 2016 and she is working on a 2nd book project titled To Build the World Anew: Black Liberation Politics and the Movement Against the Vietnam War.

Collectif Cases Rebelles is a France-based, anti-authoritarian, panafrorevolutionary, Black political collective fighting against all forms of oppression. On their website, they publish a monthly podcast, political essays, interviews, reviews and articles on Black cultures and struggles across the world. They also do grassroots work, participate in protests, organize workshops and film screenings as well as give talks. In 2017, they wrote “100 portraits contre l’état policier” (100 portraits against the Police State), and in 2018, they released Dire à Lamine, a documentary film about Lamine Dieng, a 25-year-old Black man who was killed by policemen on June 17, 2007. They also edited and translated the first French edition of Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur (Éditions Pmn).

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Léopold Lambert – Paris on July 2, 2019
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Above is a comparison of the current state of the Israeli apartheid in Palestine with its permanent form that the so-called “Kushner Plan” (from the name of the current U.S. President’s son in law), backed by the Saudi government, is currently attempting to enforce. In this plan, Palestinians would have to commit “a national suicide” — literal words of Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the UN who was given a prime space in the New York Times to express such a politicide claim — in exchange of a $50 billion investment plan for a new bantoustan state(s). Please note that the Plan itself has not been fully uncovered yet and that this map is only a speculative one, but the following points are known to be included within it:

• The annexation of significant portions of the West Bank crystallizing the current de facto status of the Israeli colonies (built in contravention with the Fourth Geneva Convention) as part of Israel.

• The consolidation of the blockade on the Gaza Strip, associated to a lease of Egyptian land to extend Palestinian land and to construct an international port.

• A junction between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip through an elevated or tunnel-based road. My speculation here is that the West Bank itself would be fragmented into two (perhaps three) territories which would also include another infrastructure of the kind (tunnel, bridge, etc. the “politics of verticality” as defined by Eyal Weizman are already well at work in apartheid Palestine.

• The normalization of the 1981 annexation of the Golan Heights (Syria) and East Jerusalem (14 years after their invasion).

• The designation, as capital of the so-called “New Palestine,” of Abu Dis, on the other side of the Apartheid Wall in Jerusalem.

• The status transformation of Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan into permanent precarious cities.

The gradient land dispossession and eviction/subduction of Palestinian since 1948 (and of Syrian people after the 1967 invasion of the Golan Heights) has been showed through maps countless times, and this new map adds to a painful cartographic imaginary of settler colonialism. However, as this plan will require a strong political mobilization from within Palestine and outside of it in the near future, it felt important to try to visualize what it actually entails.

Post-scriptum: To the depressing vision the map above creates, I feel obliged to include in contrast a more constructive one that I made three years ago for Sarha Collective‘s exhibition Chapter 31 on the futures of Palestine, which shows, rather naively, “a relic of the future” of a post-apartheid Palestine. The map shows a Palestine that has become more than the “binational state” often wished for: it has become a multinational territory, whose open borders no longer discriminate which bodies are allowed to return to it, and which ones are to be prohibited from doing so. New buildings either memorialize the past of this territory, or organize its present. While the Museum of the Nakba, the Intifada Memorial, the Apartheid Museum and the Qalandiya Museum join Yad Vashem in the memorialization of the tormented history of Jewish, Arab, Bedouin and Black Palestinians, the Jericho International Train Station, the Gaza Harbor, the Bedouin University of the Negev, the New Gaza University and many more infrastructural and academic buildings constitute the new nodes of Palestinian daily life. Trains and ferries keep Palestinians close to their neighbors and family members abroad: one hour to reach Beirut, Damascus or Amman from Jerusalem, three to reach Cairo from Rafah, one day to reach Istanbul from Haifa, etc., Finally, Israeli colonies in the West Bank have become relocation villages for the 5 millions Palestinian refugees returning, while their villages, attacked, emptied, and destroyed in 1948 are being rebuilt.

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A joint statement by Dubravka Sekulić, Elise Misao Hunchuck, and Léopold Lambert ///

Yesterday, like many people, our social media was inundated by a wave of enthusiasm for the artistic intervention that the U.S.-based architecture office Rael-San Fratello have installed on a portion of what is commonly known as the border between the nation states of the United States and Mexico. Before we proceed, we would like to say that our urge to offer a statement has less to do with the intervention itself (we have no doubt that those who live close to “the border” must negotiate their existence with it on a daily basis) which has been taken down by its designers after the “photo shoot” anyway, but rather, with the publicization orchestrated by Rael-San Fratello and relayed by countless media, because this publicization, just like the book published by Ronald Rael in 2017, Borderwall as Architecture, holds a discursive value and as such, invites urgently-needed debate. We do so as architects and landscape architects, which is to say, as people involved in disciplines that continue to be among the most implacable means of enforcement of nation states’ violence. 

When it comes to this piece of architecture that extends hundreds of miles since the first George H. W. Bush administration — we were baffled during the last U.S. presidential campaign to see how many people in the U.S. seemed to have forgotten that the wall already existed — two narratives oppose themselves. The first narrative perceives the wall as a quarrel between neighbors that ended with the erection of this oppositional architectural typology. The Rael-San Fratello intervention is thus perceived by this narrative and its adherents as a salutatory encounter where “children from both sides can play together” and where one learns to know “the other.” If we believed that this narrative was accurately describing this situation, we could join the enthusiasm for a small yet symbolic gesture.

We however believe that an accurate depiction of the current situation involves the narrative that situates this border — even before the erection of the wall that has come to embody it — as a violent settler colonial infrastructure, a result of the European (British, Spanish, French, and later white U.S.) project of the historical and ongoing systematic dispossession and genocide of Indigenous nations. The enforcement of the political infrastructure embodied in this border is not limited to the wall itself: the line of the border is thick and extends ruthlessly outward to include a 100-mile wide zone of immigration control where an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 have died in the last 20 years, where weapon-carrying U.S. white-supremacist militias have murdered many, and where the brutal hands of ICE agents can appear at any moment to seize and imprison mostly Indigenous people coming from the south of Turtle Island in its growing network of concentration camps. 

Three years ago, the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign saw two paradigms facing each other: on the one hand, the active reinforcement of the neoliberal settler colonial status quo and, on the other hand, its fascist intensification, an architecture competition entitled “Build the Border Wall?”. Launched to offer designers the possibility to envision the materialization of the border wall extension ‘proposed’ by then-candidate and now 45th president of the northern settler colony, the outrage within the architecture scene against this competition was swift and it was substantial. Rightfully, many saw the efforts by the organizers to make the competition “politically neutral” (LOL) and to imagine a “humane” border as fundamentally unacceptable, although the outrage was certainly less than in 2006 when the New York Times imagined an architectural competition for “A Fence With More Beauty, Fewer Barbs” (see this text written by Léopold in 2017). Imagine our surprise then when we saw the very same architecture scene celebrating three pink seesaws set up on the very same settler colonial wall through the provision and distribution of images (because again, this is less about the installation itself than its publicization) of a more beautiful, more productive, more “humane” settler colonial infrastructure. The immediate public acceptance and celebration of this project flattened it into a palatable image of hope, concealing if not erasing real and pressing  concerns. By doing so, it reinforces the continuous political production of the two sides of a line for which one side is fully subjected to its enforcement, while the other is able to navigate between both (as demonstrated in the case of the seesaws videos).

“They are three seesaws, why do you care?” We care because, if we are serious about the dismantlement of the racist and colonial structures that rule the people living in Turtle Island (and we are), then our actions and political imaginaries must be consistent with this program. As such, the only publicized intervention we could possibly imagine supporting regarding the settler colonial wall involves a bulldozer (painted in pink, if you’d like) and a driver with the privilege of a U.S. passport behind the wheel. We do not ask you for the same sacrificial gesture that was carried out by Willem van Spronsen who was killed as he was attacking ICE’s Northwest Detention Center (read: concentration camp infrastructure) in Tacoma just two weeks ago on July 13, 2019, but, let us be clear: we cannot and will not  support any project that does not fundamentally challenge — symbolically or effectively — the structure of settler colonialism. 

SUGGESTED READING/LISTENING ///

• Silvia Federici interviewed by Max Haiven, On capitalism, colonialism, women and food politics, Politics and Culture, Issue 2, 2009
• Nick Estes, Our History is the Future, Verso, 2018
• Our history is the Future with Nick Estes, The Dig Radio Podcast
  
• Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Border as a Method, Duke University Press, 2013
  
• Manu Vimalassery, Juliana Hu Pegues, and Alyosha Goldstein, On Colonial Unknowing, Theory & Event, Volume 19, Issue 4, 2016
  

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Dear readers, here is the introduction written for the book The Funambulist by its Readers: Political Geographies from Chicago and Elsewhere, a book commissioned by the curators of the Chicago Architecture Biennial 2019, which collects 20 articles we published in our 22 first issues, as well as five new texts by Chicago-based activists. You may find more information about the book (and download it for free) and how to order it by following this link.

Initiated in 2010 as an online editorial platform, and then in 2015 as a bimestrial print and online magazine, The Funambulist parts from a narrow understanding of architecture as the authored design of inhabitable sculptures to favor its broader definition as the discipline that organizes bodies in space. When investigated through this definition, architecture can be perceived as one of the key components as to how political forces are able to materialize into space and enforce themselves onto bodies. Although true anywhere else in the world (as this volume illustrates), the united states, where the Chicago Architecture Biennial occurs, offers a particularly poignant example of the kind. The infrastructure of the settler colony includes the boats that forcefully displaced 12 million kidnapped African bodies, the plantations that then extracted the workforce of those same enslaved bodies, as well as the architecture of the border and carceral state — from the state and federal prisons to the concentration camps detaining yesterday Japanese diaspora and today Indigenous migrants coming from the south of Turtle Island. These examples overlap with the history of violence that founded this nation state and through which it continues to operate. To this, one could answer that architecture has also been materializing decolonial and anti-racist political forces; this is true to a certain extent, but we have to observe how easy it is for architecture to enforce the settler-colonial and carceral agenda before we can even start doing so. After all, hasn’t the incumbent president of the settler colony run an entire electoral campaign on the very materialization of a colonial border line into the most common architectural typology: a wall?

With such a perspective, we have attempted to detach ourselves from architecture as a discipline and have focused instead on direct or indirect spatial approaches to anti-colonial, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, queer, trans, feminist, anti-ableist political struggles, and that against what they are fighting. Palestine, Kashmir, Kenya, Kanaky, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Guinea, Japan, Singapore, France, Turtle Island, and the waters of the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aden, and the Persian Gulf… these are the geographies mobilized in this volume, but they are among the many we have been discussing in the first 25 issues (and counting) of the magazine. This list does not provide merely a context to the struggles, but rather, considers the spaces that influence them and that are, in turn, informed by them. This is true at multiple scales: although it is common to examine the ableist object, the gendered house, the segregated neighborhood, the capitalist city, or the colonial infrastructure as having processes of violence incorporated within their very structures, these multi-scalar built environments are nevertheless interchangeable. Analyzing the structures of violence is crucial,but not enough however; this is why our six issues of 2019 are dedicated to promoting several dimensions (spaces, publications, architectures, futurisms, self-defense, and pedagogy) of political struggles from Aotearoa to Chiapas, from Johannesburg to Gaza, etc.

We have decided that the key notion emerging from this collection of texts should be political usefulness. Much more than convincing a liberal audience of the urgency of the political struggles showcased throughout these pages, our number one ambition consists in producing something useful, if not operative, for those who are fighting “on the ground.” This is why we tested this notion of usefulness by inviting 20 regular readers (many of whom are also contributors) of The Funambulist to pick one text in our first 22 issues that appears to them as being particularly politically useful, and to explain it for this text, which is then to be republished in this present volume. The definition of “useful” was left open to the discretion of these twenty guests. Some understood it in its most operative manner (how to organize, what strategies to adopt, how to approach time or space differently), while others interpreted it through more literary or methodological readings.

All the texts relate to the statement drafted by the curators of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (Yesomi Umolu, Sepake Agiama, and Paulo Tavares) that commissioned us this volume. The Indigenous insurrections, from Turtle Island (Nick Estes, Deborah Cowen) to Kanaky (Anthony Tutugoro), address the notion of sovereignty that “No Land Beyond” proposes to question. Both the memories of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde headquarters in Conakry (Sónia Vaz Borges), and those of the Palestinian infrastructure of intimacy that used to incarnate the family home later destroyed by the Israeli army (Sabrien Amrov) relate directly to the “Appearances and Erasures” chapter. As for the “Rights and Reclamation” section, it can be found in the anti-racist movements of the French and Portuguese suburbs (respectively Hacène Belmessous, and Ana Naomi de Sousa & António Brito Guterres). Finally, the decolonization of time (Rasheedah Phillips), the radically anti-normative design of Arakawa and Madeline Gins (Momoyo Homma), and the “Decolonial Mapping Toolkit” (Patrick Jaojoco) embody excellent examples of what the Biennial curators intended for the chapter “Common Ground.”

However, none of this would make any sense if the attempt to produce political usefulness here would not be profitable to activists in Chicago where this Biennial is set. What could appear as common sense requires instead some deliberateness, as the effects of the Biennial itself could not possibly be neutral to the city — something that the curators themselves have well understood, but these effects are much greater than the event under their control. This is even more true when one of the main initiators of the Biennial is former mayor Rahm Emanuel himself. During his eight years of tenure, his administration has shut down 49 public schools, encouraged the gentrification of neighborhoods inhabited predominantly by the Black and Brown working class, and considerably reinforced a police force that practices what the U.S. Department of Justice itself has called a “pattern and practice of unconstitutional abuses, including the use of excessive force, especially against people of color” (Mother Jones, 2017). In 2015, massive protests demanded Emanuel’s resignation as investigations established that a video of Black teenager Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by a white police officer on October 20, 2014 was deliberately hidden from the public by the mayor’s office, while Emanuel was running for reelection. Admittedly, Emanuel did not transform the Chicago Police Department (CPD) into the institutional enforcement of structural racism it currently is. Using the most extreme instance of its brutal recent history, between 1972 and 1991, the CPD has tortured over a hundred Black and Latinx people in their West Chicago Homan Square facility, as The Guardian revealed in 2015. However, he brought his contribution to this history of racist harm; most recently in projecting the creation of a $95 million police academy in the Black neighborhood of West Garfield Park, not far from Homan Square, which continues to be used by the CPD despite the atrocities committed in it.

In these conditions, our participation to this Biennial was conditioned on making this critique heard through the voices of five Chicago-based activists, as well as dedicating a third of our production budget to their honoraria — for his help in this process, I would like to thank another Chicago activist, Ladipo Famodu. These five activists are Patricia Nguyen who, along with her collaborator John Lee, has been selected for the design of the Chicago Torture Justice Memorial Project; Benji Hart, one of the key figures of the #NoCopAcademy campaign; Jesse Mumm, whose academic and activist work takes site in Humboldt Park against gentrification; Maira Khwaja, whose job as an educator puts her at the forefront of the daily problems faced by her students, between racist policing and gun violence; and finally Anjulie Rao, whose bridges between the world of architecture and that of political activism make her place in the pages of this volume particularly relevant. A few months after incumbent mayor Lori Lightfoot took office, the usefulness of these contributions is not so much to be found in an assessment of the previous administration’s policies, and more in the urgency to fundamentally sever them, and hold the municipality accountable for the violence it continues to produce through its police and neo-liberal policies. If we might be of any use to this end, then our participation to an event like the Biennial would have been worth it. ■

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Léopold Lambert – Paris on September 23, 2019
If you enjoy articles of the blog, have a look at The Funambulist Magazine!

In the first week of December 2018, the students of many high schools in France joined the movement of refusal of the Macron government’s neoliberal policies initiated by the Gilets Jaunes. The police violence against the striking children was ruthless, but as always in France, the most extreme forms of violence are reserved to the youth of the banlieues in a perpetuation of colonial violence with which their grand parents were all too familiar. This is how, on December 6, 2018, 151 students of two high schools of Mantes-la-Jolie (distant Paris western banlieue) were arrested by the police and forced to stay for hours on their knees, their arms above their heads. One arrogant police officer filmed the scene, which ultimately allowed all in France to be a passive witness of this deeply humiliating and traumatizing event. In May 2019, the head of the police inspection services declared that there had been “no deviant behavior from the police officers present that day,” infuriating the parents of the 151 children, in particular their mothers who had formed the Collectif de Défense des Jeunes du Mantois the day after the arrest and have recently decided to organize a massive march to demand justice on December 8, 2019 in Paris. The Funambulist was present at the preliminary organizing meeting and we have translated the call into English to ask those who will be able to, to join us that day.

Important note: The video of that day has been what allowed so many to support the movement so far, as many of us saw in them, not only infuriating images of subjugated children, but also a literal reiteration of colonial scenes. These images are however extremely distressing and triggering to many, the students shown on the video in particular. For this reason, we are not reproducing them here. If it is important for you to see them, we recommend versions where the faces of the children have been blurred like this one published by The Guardian.

Mothers’ March for Justice and Dignity ///
Translation by Léopold Lambert, edited by Carol Que

“We are at war!”

Former President Francois Hollande was right when he proclaimed this, the day after the dreadful attacks that struck Paris in November 2015. What he was not saying however, is that he also held responsibility for the way events unfolded – him, as well as all the left and right governments that preceded him.

Yes, they are at war.

They are at war as much inside as outside our borders.

They are at war against the segregated banlieues (suburbs) and against immigrant neighborhoods.

Didn’t they initiate the State of Emergency during the 2005 revolts, then again after the 2015 attacks specifically targeting Muslims – who were the ideal culprits of terrorist actions that find its causes in the disorder of a world they themselves had fabricated?

They are at war against the banlieue youth. Don’t they perpetuate police crimes, while abandoning families in mourning and despair?

They are at war against our children. Haven’t they humiliated them enough during the violent suppression against the Mantes-la-Jolie high schoolers who were mobilized in the Fall 2018? In doing so, they reinforced their feelings shared by so many others: that they are not legitimate in this country because of their economic background, but also because they are West or North Africans, Carribeans, Roma, Turkish, Muslims…

They are at war against undocumented people. Haven’t they violently expelled them from the Saint Bernard church in 1995 and then from the Pantheon this summer?

They are at war against migrants. Haven’t they multiplied the obstacles to freedom of movement despite the human rights convention? We know the consequences: the Mediterranean has become a large cemetery for these new wretched of the earth.

They are at war against the subaltern classes. Havent they systematically used so-called “non-lethal” weapons that nonetheless killed Mrs Rédouane in Marseille, Steve Maia Caniço in Nantes, and injured hundreds of Gilets Jaunes in their legitimate demonstration for greater economic justice?

They are at war against political activists. Don’t the legal justice system and the police persecute anti-fascist activists while closing their eyes to the actions of openly fascist organizations?

They are at war against the current French colonies (overseas territories), in the same way that they were against their former colonies. Hasn’t the French army deployed itself in numerous African countries, supposedly in the name of the “war on terror”, when what is really at stake are the profits of global French companies? Doesn’t France support directly or indirectly, since the very beginning, Israeli colonialism in its oppression of Palestinian people?

Yes, they are at war. At war against all that resists and contest the racist and neoliberal order that they want to forcefully impose on us.

Hollande and his predecessors have zealously declared this war and Macron is perpetuating it. Their war is capitalist, it is racist, it is imperialist.

We, mothers of the banlieues, mothers of the children who were brought to their knees in Mantes-la-Jolie, no longer accept this permanent state of injustice. We only wish for one thing: peace.

But we have one conviction: no peace can be sustained without the respect of our dignity, and not without the minimum of justice we are entitled to loudly claim.

Today, we are worried to know that our children are no longer protected.

Today, we are angry and we are humiliated by the judiciary system’s contempt.

More importantly, we are not naive. We soon will be in the middle of an electoral campaign and we know that various candidates running for mayor, whether they are from the left or the right, will come to us for our vote. We refuse to be merely seen as a tank of votes. We say it loud and will continue to do so throughout this campaign: not a single vote for any candidate who won’t support our fight.

Today, we are mobilized more than ever to be heard both at the local and national scale.

We demand that police inspection head Brigitte Julien and Nanterre prosecutor Catherine Denis reopen the investigation: 151 arrested high schoolers means 151 victims and 151 witnesses. Only four of them were heard by the judiciary system. We demand that our children be heard.

We say STOP to the exceptional treatment of our children who are discriminated by their ages, when they are on their way to school or in its vicinity. We no longer accept that their right to innocence is denied. We no longer accept “ghetto schools”.

We say STOP to racist police actions, to body searches, to the continuous assault on our children’s physical integrity.

We say STOP to the ubiquitous police state in our neighborhoods instead of the welfare state.

We say STOP to police violence that go beyond our neighborhoods and now affect social movements in general, the Gilets Jaunes in particular, or anyone who dare to oppose their resistance to those in power.

For the love of our children and to give strength to these demands, we are calling for a massive march for justice and dignity on December 8, 2019 in Barbès, Paris.

We call to all the committees against police violence, antiracist organizations, injured committees, Gilets Jaunes, the unions, and political parties to join us to demand “Justice for our children!”

If collectively we are not able to obtain justice for our children who live in the most precarious neighborhoods of France – when the events in Mantes-la-Jolie revealed a flagrant police crime to the entire world – then our youth is abandoned to themselves, and it will no longer be allowed for anyone to dream of a better world.

The post Joins Us to the Mothers’ March for Justice and Dignity in Paris on December 8, 2019 appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Léopold Lambert – Paris on October 17, 2019
If you enjoy articles of the blog, have a look at The Funambulist Magazine!

On October 17, 1961, a few months before the final victory of the Algerian Revolution, the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in France organized a massive pacific march in Paris to show their determination against the curfew that the Prefect of police, the infamous Maurice Papon, in agreement with the French government, had taken against their sole persons a few days earlier — during the 1961-1963 state of emergency in France. 20,000 Algerians joined the march which was met with systematic and deadly violence by the Paris police. Between 200 and 300 Algerians were killed by being shot, beaten to death, or thrown into the Seine river; 10,000 were arrested and detained for several days; hundreds were deported to Algeria — some of these deportations were used to hide the deaths. 2.5 years ago, through a “chrono-cartography” of the event, I have tried to illustrate how the memorialization of this massacre in the streets of Paris tends to be too focus on one particular moment (the very evening of October 17, 1961) and one particular space (the Saint-Michel bridge). On the contrary, this deadly violence in Paris had multiple temporalities and spatialies: it had started in the summer of 1958, a few months after Papon was named Prefect of police after having been a prefect in charge of the counter-revolution in eastern Algeria, and it took place in many spaces of the city and its banlieues (suburbs). You can read a comprehensive account through 25 maps by visiting this former article.

On October 3, 2019, an employee of the Paris Prefecture of police killed four of his colleagues with a knife for reasons that are not fully uncovered for the moment. This uncertainty on the causes did not prevent the President Macron and his Minister of the Interior Castaner to initiate a vicious islamophobic campaign presenting any devout Muslim in France as a potential terrorist who needs to be denounced based on signs as benign as a beard or the refusal to give a kiss to a female colleague. In its article recounting the murders of the four public servants, newspaper Le Monde wrote “Never since the end of World War II did the courtyard of the Prefecture experience such a bloody event.” The journalist may have been in good faith when they wrote this, but if that’s the case, it proves the extent of the white French ignorance regarding the massacre of October 17, 1961, as many of the Algerians who had been arrested in the vicinity of the Prefecture had been brought in the courtyard and were systematically beaten up (sometimes to death) with batons (see more on map 12 below).

Last night, a few hours of the commemoration of the 58th anniversary of the massacre, a small group of female activists visited several of these spaces to graffiti or glue the names of some of the Algerians who were killed that night. In a particularly intense policed and fascist militant environment, they succeeded in paying an homage to the history of Algerian resistance (one that continues today through the antiracist and anticolonial activism) that goes beyond the authorized (yet very important, of course) setting of the 6PM annual gathering on the Saint-Michel bridge. This is crucial as the very discreet official efforts of acknowledgment of the massacre from the Paris municipality and the French state never target those who are responsible for it (Papon, of course, but also the De Gaulle-Debré government, and the police officers themselves). As Paris former mayor Bertrand Delanoë himself declared on October 17, 2001 when a small official commemorative plate was set up on the side of the Pont Saint-Michel: “This plaque is not targeting anyone” (he meant it as a peace offering to the right wing but he was right: it does not target those responsible). We were happy to learn that the maps designed for the article cited above had been useful to the brave activists who undertook this action and we’re publishing the pictures of their work here as well in association to these maps to insist on the historical significance of each of the places they visited.

1/// Gymnase Japy

“Ait Larbi Larbi killed by the police. October 17, 1961, we don’t forget, we don’t forgive!”

2/// Pont de Clichy

“Here, Algerians were drowned. October 17, 1961”

3/// Rue Réaumur

“Saadi Tahar killed by the police”

“Latia Younes drowned by the police”

4/// Saint-Séverin & Saint-Michel neighborhood

“We are the descendants of the Algerians you did not drown”

“Here France has drowned Algerians” (on this last picture, the Prefecture of police is visible in the background)

5/// La Goutte d’Or & Ménilmontant neighborhoods

“Zebodj Mohamed, killed by the police. We don’t forget, we don’t forgive” La Goutte d’Or was a prominent Algerian neighborhood during the Algerian Revolution. In July 1955, a revolt against the police occurred and the neighborhood was besieged for a few days.

“Zeman Rabah, killed by the police”

The full 25 map chronocartography of the massacre can be read here. (it can also been accessed in French on Vacarme’s website)

The post A Night to Remember the Algerians Who Were Killed in Paris on October 17, 1961 appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Léopold Lambert – Tokyo on January 5, 2020
If you enjoy articles of the blog, have a look at The Funambulist Magazine!

I just finished reading for the second time in two years the 1979 book Les porteurs de valises (The Suitcase Carriers) by French writers Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman and, as for the first time, I feel compelled to write something about it, or rather about what it means for the politics of what many people problematically (I think!) call “allyship.” I however measure the difficulty of doing so (I could not write anything that I would deem valuable the first time) since it involves the contradiction of addressing the struggle for the dismantlement of colonial and white supremacist structures by centering for a minute the potential white contribution to it. What follows is therefore a hesitant and doubting sum of reflections that the two readings of the book triggered in me.

The said “suitcase carriers” were an organized network of white French (in majority, intellectuals) active supports of the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962) dependent on the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN)’s France Federation (“the 7th Wilaya”). It is important to stress that this network was made of French people in France; European settlers in Algeria who joined the Algerian struggle (i.e. settlers who aimed at becoming Algerians) embody a significantly different example and risked drastically more in their action. It is also important to state that on the contrary of the popular belief among the current white Left in France, many of these “suitcase carriers” did not have an affiliation with the Communist Party (and those who were usually resigned from the party after the latter voted the “special powers” to the French government in 1956). The book itself provides a very French-centric vision of the Algerian Revolution, but again, that’s the inherent contradiction of dealing with this topic.

Beyond the book itself however, I believe that this historical example in the context of what is arguably the most canonic/studied political struggle against French colonialism (along with the Haitian Revolution) can be useful to move beyond the concept of allyship. What made the suitcase carrier network somehow useful to the Revolution (I say “somehow” because it is crucial not to overestimate how useful it has been and thus not too fetichize their action) is its capacity to turn whiteness against itself — not to follow a few behavioral rules to avoid embracing a colonial attitude towards Algerians! Navigating fluidly the French space for Algerian revolutionaries (men in particular) was a perilous endeavor, hence the need for white supports (in particular white women, who were more present than men) who could either somehow fluidify this practice, or replace Algerians when it came to carrying money, documents, or weapons in France and in the process of border crossing. Writing and publishing are also front and center of this narrative which, of course, does not leave me indifferent, far from it.

The difference in the risk encountered between Algerian revolutionaries and French supports was also fully integrated within their judicial defense, in particular during the largest trial of the network in September 1960. Death penalty being off the table for the French, their lawyers, in particular the charismatic Jacques Vergès, were able to practice what the latter theorized as “rupture defense” (cf. past post on the topic). This consisted in refusing to play the game of the court and returning the accusation to the colonial system itself. The defendants were risking more severe sentences by adopting such a strategy but they also embraced this risk that would ultimately prove useful for the spreading of their engagement.

Reflections around this historical example allows us to establish a series of significant differences between what is commonly called an “ally” and what a paradigm built on the “suitcase carrier” example would constitute. An ally is, by definition, someone who is able to carry on their own agenda at the same time than momentarily supporting others’ agendas, while a “suitcase carrier” does not have any other agenda than the one set by the struggle they support. An ally is able to momentarily or definitely stop their support, whereas a “suitcase carrier” has made a commitment to the cause that cannot remain without legal/physical/social consequences — very few of the Algerian Revolution’s suitcase carriers will be subjected to the French police torture in comparison to their Algerian fellows as well as to the European supports in Algeria, but many were violently interrogated and incarcerated. An ally is able to get recognition by following a set of predefined rules whereas a “suitcase carrier” gives up individual recognition (in the case of the Algerian Revolution, they even had to join clandestinity) to share collective victories (as well as defeats).

It is difficult for white supports not to fetichize the “suitcase carriers”; many of us today do not have to join clandestinity to turn whiteness against itself (although the various forms of criminalization of antifascist organization certainly suggests the probable return to such a need) and it is easy to build a mythology based on behaviors that, despite their deliberateness, were perceived by many of their authors as the only thing they could do to remain faithful to their principles. It is particularly crucial not to fall in this fetichization, especially since it is not because one made an irreversible commitment that one does not remain part of the structures one aims to dismantle, far from it. This is, again, the contradiction that lies in this engagement since the usefulness of the white contribution to the struggle lies particularly in its positioning within these structures.

Thanks to Hajer Ben Boubaker for her help in the re-reading of this messy text!

The post Against the Notion of “Allyship”: The Example of the Algerian Revolution’s “Suitcase Carriers” appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

The names of the signatories will be regularly added to this page.

We are making a few past articles of the magazine and podcast episodes available to all in order to provide a useful resource complementing this pledge:

• MAKING ABOLITION GEOGRAPHY IN CALIFORNIA’S CENTRAL VALLEY
  with Ruth Wilson Gilmore in The Funambulist 21 (Jan-Feb. 2019) Space & Activism
• RACIALIZED CRIMINALIZATION AND PRISON UPRISINGS IN THE UNITED STATES
  with Orisanmi Burton in The Funambulist 12 (July-August 2017) Racialized Incarceration
• ON PRISON ABOLITIONISM
  with Nasrin Himada in The Funambulist 04 (Mar-Apr. 2016) Carceral Environments / You can also listen to this conversation in The Funambulist Podcast
• BODIES IN RESISTANCE IN THE NORTH OF IRELAND’S POLITICAL PRISONS
  by Fiona McCann in The Funambulist 04 (Mar-Apr. 2016) Carceral Environments
• DOCUMENTING THE UNDOCUMENTED: CARCERAL ARCHITECTURE AND MIGRANT BODIES
  with Tings Chak in The Funambulist Podcast episode 41 (May 2014).
• ON GENOCIDE, DETENTION, AND REFUGEEHOOD
  with Imran Mohammad in The Funambulist Podcast episode 134 (December 2019).
• ABOLISH ALL PRISONS: FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PRACTICE AND NON-PRACTICE OF ARCHITECTURE
  by Léopold Lambert in The Architectural Review (June 2018).

We also recommend consulting the Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) website, as well as this comprehensive text by Rachel Kushner about the abolitionist work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

Names of signatories as of February 9:

The post We Pledge to Never Participate to the Design of Spaces of Detention appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

The Funambulist lance une série de conférences autour du thème des réparations. Des luttes pour la reconnaissance des crimes de l’esclavage à celle des souverainetés des peuples autochtones de Palestine à Kanaky, le combat contre le colonialisme perdure. La question des réparations n’en est que plus cruciale dans nombre de causes politiques et militante. Tous les mois, nous vous donnons donc rendez-vous pour discuter avec un⸱e ou plusieurs invité⸱e⸱s autour de ces questions. Qu’entend-on par réparations ? Quoi et comment (se) réparer ? Qui sont les concerné.e.s? Quelles sont des pistes et actions concrètes ? Cette série est pensée comme une plateforme d’échange pour, à terme, construire des moyens de lutter ensemble.

#01 – 3 Mars 2020 19h-21h – UNIVERSITÉ PARIS 8
Hajer Ben Boubaker & Dawud Bumaye ///
Se Réparer, Collectivement

La réparation peut-elle se passer de celui qui a commis l’injustice ? Il s’agit ici d’ouvrir une véritable réflexion pour contrecarrer la défaillance de l’Etat afin de penser et d’agir de manière autonome. Au-delà de la posture individualiste qu’à pris le concept du self-care, nous proposons une perspective communautaire qui s’adosse à une lecture matérialiste des rapports sociaux. Cette conférence s’interroge sur les pratiques de solidarité pour pallier à l’injustice et à la violence de nos conditions dans une société postcoloniale.

Première conférence mensuelle The Funambulist autour de la question des Réparations. Nous sommes généreusement accueilli⸱e⸱s par Nacira Guénif-Souilamas à l’Université Paris 8 (Maison de la Recherche, Amphi MR002), 2 Rue de la Liberté, Saint-Denis, Métro 13 Saint-Denis – Université. Paris 8 étant en grève, nous nous inscrivons dans le programme alternatif d’ateliers mobilisés et en lutte. Cette première conférence (en français) sera aussi l’occasion de lancer notre 28ème numéro (mars-avril 2020) Our Battles. Le magazine sera disponible sur place à prix réduit. See fb event.

Hajer Ben Boubaker est une militante et chercheuse indépendante. Elle est diplômée en Histoire et Sciences Politiques de la Sorbonne et en Genre, Politique et Sexualité de l’EHESS. Ses recherches portent sur les politiques migratoires européennes et leurs influences dans les pays de la rive sud de la Méditerranée. Elle est la fondatrice du podcast Vintage Arab qui interroge la place des transmissions culturelle et politiques en diaspora et qui s’attache à se réapproprier un patrimoine, loin des imaginaires orientalistes.

Dawud Bumaye est une militante afroféministe. Ses travaux visent principalement à articuler les rapports de race, classe, sexe/genre et sexualités. Engagée sur les luttes noires et de la diaspora, antiracistes décoloniales, contre les violences policières et anticarcérales, anticapitalistes, matérialistes, féministes et « queers of color », Dawud Bumaye est co-fondatrice du collectif « Queer et trans révolutionnaire » et a exercé la profession d’éditrice.

Les invitées des deux prochaines conférences seront le collectif Cases Rebelles (2 avril) et Ariella Azoulay (12 mai).

The Funambulist est un magazine anglophone qui interroge les politiques des espaces et des corps. Nous espérons fournir une plateforme utile au sein de laquelle les voix de militant⸱e⸱s, universitaires, artistes et architectes peuvent se rencontrer et construire des solidarités a diverses échelles géographiques. A travers des articles, des entretiens, des oeuvres d’art et des projets architecturaux, nous assemblons une modeste archive pour les luttes anticoloniales, antiracistes, queer et féministes.

The post The Funambulist Lecture Series in French: Réparations appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

Dear Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, dear Craig Edward Dykers, dear partners and employees of the world-renowned architecture office Snøhetta,

This letter to you originates from Paris where, one of your design is slowly materializing into what soon will be the new headquarters of France’s major newspaper Le Monde. You are hopefully aware that the construction site of this project has been the place of a crucial struggle for workers’ rights these past few days. In fact, as we are writing you this letter, some of our undocumented worker comrades, along with the union CNT-Solidarité ouvrière (Labor National Confederation-Workers solidarity) have been “inaugurating your building” (their words) occupying day and night the construction site as a means to obtain reparations.

About 30 undocumented workers have been hired by two subcontractors (CICAD and Golden Clean) of the fifth largest construction company in Europe, the infamous Eiffage, which has been hired by Le Monde for the construction of the steel structure and facade of “your building.” Similarly to the situation of many undocumented workers in Europe, these workers have been exploited and their labor is legally qualified as “dissimulated” by the French Penal Code.

These undocumented workers demand:

• the end of subcontracting and their direct hire by Eiffage ;
• the payment of all the hours of labor according to the standard hourly rate (some of them have been only paid 40 euros per night; extra time has been paid 5 euro per hour) ;
• the pay stubs corresponding to their labor ;
• the respect of the labor code, security norms and collective conventions;
• the documents that would allow their documentation.

Some of the 600 Gilets Noirs (group of undocumented activists), who, on July 12, 2019, succeeded in occupying the French Pantheon before being violently charged and beaten by armed racist police, are part of the occupation. Gilets Noirs activists — many of whom came to live and work in France from Mali, Mauritania, Guinea, or Ivory Coast — have been stressing the many reasons that make their extremely precarious conditions the effects of colonial structures, both in the way their countries still exist in an economic, military, and political dependency imposed by France, and through the process of racialization to which the French state and its representatives (the police in particular) are subjecting them. It is also crucial to understand that the status of undocumented workers does not only make them economically vulnerable, it also makes them virtually disposable and creates conditions of potentially deadly physical harm. Every year, many undocumented workers die on European construction sites with no accountability whatsoever for the many people responsible for this situation — even far from the shores and way into its land, Fortress Europe continues to kill racialized people.

As the architects of Le Monde‘s headquarters, you are part of the entities politically responsible for the conditions of labor in which your design is being materialized. As such, you cannot claim neutrality, and we, 153 architects and non-architects from various places of the world, formally ask you to unequivocally position yourselves with regards to this situation. If you choose to side with Eiffage, claims that this is not your responsibility, or decline to answer, we will consider you as political adversaries and hold you publicly accountable. If, on the other hand, you recognize that architects are co-responsible for the labor conditions on the sites of the materialization of their design, you can establish an important precedent for the profession, undocumented workers’ rights, and society at large. In doing so, you must explicitly communicate to Eiffage your support to undocumented workers’ claims so as to put pressure on them as it is your prerogative.

We thank you for your time and hope to hear from you as soon as possible.

Signatories (names of people who identify with the “we” of this letter will be regularly added here)
Léopold Lambert, publisher & architect
Evelyn Hofmann, architecture
Desiree Valadares
Jessica Ferreiro, Social Worker
Nataša Prljević, cultural worker
Bogdan Ionescu, architect
Margarida Waco
Antoine Perron, architecture student
Chloé Darmon, architecture student
Hadj-Hassen Amel, architecture student
Françoise Vergès, Political Activist
Anne Barthes, architecte
Patricia Morton, Professor of Architectural History
Muchamad Nathalie, visual artist
Karima El Kharraze, playwright and theatre director
Hajer Ben Boubaker
Miriam H Abraham, educator & developer
Dubravka Sekulić, architect and educator
Esther Delaunay, architecture student
Lynda Zein, architect
Pedro Telles da Silveira, Historian
Amarí Peliowski, Architect
Apruzzese Antoine, architect
Erika Brandl, architect
Dr Hannah le Roux, architect
Mitchell Lawrence, Architecture Student
Isabel Gutierrez Sanchez, Architect
Benoit, architecture student
Gerty Dambury, playwright
Faune Stevens, designer
Nadia El Hakim, architect
Peter Box Andersson, curator, Oslo
Kenza Talmat, student
Nathyfa Michel, teacher
Ben Abdallah Yassine, Design Student
Amel M’harzi, student
Shela Sheikh, academic
Lori A. Brown, architect and professor
Madeeha Merchant, Architect
Biayna Bogosian
Jérémy DC, translator
James Martin, Architect
seldal giritli, architect / redaktor
Leó Barista
Karolína Plášková, architect
Michael Badu, architect
Leslie Forehand, Architect and Professor
Xavier Wrona, architect and professor
Olivia Ahn, Designer
Zineb El Gharbi, PhD Candidate, Ehess (Paris)
Marianne Ferrand, Architect
Olivier Peyricot, direction recherche Cité du design
Charlotte, architect etc
Etienne Chobaux, architect
Kordae Jatafa Henry, Director + Designer
Rosalba González, urban planner
Orit Theuer, Architect
Alfred Amely
René Boer, critic
emily suzanne lever, reporter
Emilie Pichot, librarian
Sadia Shirazi, PhD candidate and educator
Albert Refiti, associate professor of art and design
Peter Macapia, Professor, Architectural Designer
Jeanne Rivière, architecte
lize wessels, architecture student
Mina Rafiee- Architect
SOV
Martin Byrne, Architect
ST Luk, Designer
Sarah Roubach, architect
Nasser Rabbat, Professor of Architecture
Wardak Feda, Architect
Melissa BELL BELL – travailleuse social
Samaneh Moafi, Senior Researcher (architecture)
Marina Otero, architect
Marat Cackley-Hughes
Brent Patterson, Teacher architectural theory & history – ENSAPM, ENSAPLV, ENSAB
Jeevan Farias, Researcher
Nayri Carman, student
Tibourki youssef student
Marie Hamoniaux, architecture student
Baptiste SÉRIS – ENSA Paris-Malaquais
Julia Markey, Architectural Designer
Etienne Issa, arch designer, researcher, and activist
Sonia Zerhouni, Engineer
Jaemin AN, architecture student
Alex Lenthe
Massicilia Nedir, student
Rula Shadid, Architect
Sunmi Lee, Designer
Ziheng Li student
Nagy Makhlouf Architecture student
Noelle Geller
Charlotte Grace, Lecturer in Architecture
architect
Jade Bénéï – Architecture student
Mai AlBattat _ Urban designer
Jean Makhlouta, architecte
Belen Laquèche, architecture student
Elise Hunchuck, landscape architect & editor
Silvia Rafael Pazos – architect
Timothy Perkins, professor urban politics ENSCI-les ateliers, artist, architect
Marina L, student
Merve Bedir, architect
Jude Hamze, student
Ana Dana Beroš, architect and curator
Dimitra Andritsou, architect, researcher
Georges Kallab – Architecte
Ethel Baraona Pohl. Co-founder of dpr-barcelona
Emilio Brandao, architect & teacher
Leroy & Architecture’s Student
Arvind Ramachandran, architect
Enguerran Chauve, Artist and Designer
A. Journée-Duez, PhD candidate in Anthropology
HiroKo Nakatani, Architect
Fernande Njonkou Njanjo, architecte
M. Wesam Al Asali, Architect
Elias Guenoun, architect
Thomas Batzenschlager – Architect & Teacher
Daron Chiu, architecture student
Lenka Milerova, architect
Stijn Baets architect
Mara Petra Architect
Giacomo Pirazzoli, architect and professor
Ana María León, architect, historian, educator
Gianluca Croce, architect
Bernardo Amaral, Architect
Álvaro López Gadea, architecture student
Keith Hack, Graduate Architecture Student
Sarah Gerdiken architecture student
Nacira GUÉNIF Sociologist, Professor University Paris !
Karina A. Architect
Constantinos Miltiadis, architect
Alexandra Bedin – architecture master student
Alice Ravelo de Tovar, architecture student
Nagapane Shalinie – étudiante
Ruth Lang, architect
Anaïs Duong-Pedica, Researcher at Åbo Akademi University (Finland)
Nora Labo, art historian
mireille besnard artiste
Sam Maolánach Ó Gealbháin, Architecture student.
Aref, architect
Max Turnheim, Architect
Sanela Dizdar, architect
Ena Kukic, architect
Kendra James, Sr Design Director
Sébastien Beauregard, architecte
Deborah Cowen, professor – urban planning and geography
Joshua Barnett, RA, architect.
Frixos Petrou, architecture student
Christos Floros, Architect
Erdem Üngür, Researcher/Architect
 

The post Letter to Snøhetta: You Are Also Accountable for the Exploitation of Undocumented Workers on Your Project appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.

This lecture series about the question of Reparations is part of our new set of projects in French to be useful for activism where we are in addition of continuing to make bridges between struggles of the world.

Des luttes pour la reconnaissance des crimes de l’esclavage à celle des souverainetés des peuples autochtones de Palestine à Kanaky, le combat contre le colonialisme perdure. La question des réparations n’en est que plus cruciale dans nombre de causes politiques et militante. Tous les mois, nous vous donnons donc rendez-vous pour discuter avec un·e ou plusieurs invité·e·s autour de ces questions. Qu’entend-on par réparations ? Quoi et comment (se) réparer ? Qui sont les concerné.e.s? Quelles sont des pistes et actions concrètes ? Cette série est pensée comme une plateforme d’échange pour, à terme, construire des moyens de lutter ensemble.

Conférence #01 Hajer Ben Boubaker & Dawud Bumaye /// Se Réparer, Collectivement (Ecouter sur R22 – Tout Monde)

Conférence donnée le 3 mars 2020 à l’Université Paris 8 à Saint-Denis à l’invitation de Nacira Guénif-Souilamas.

La réparation peut-elle se passer de celui qui a commis l’injustice ?

Il s’agit ici d’ouvrir une véritable réflexion pour contrecarrer la défaillance de l’Etat afin de penser et d’agir de manière autonome. Au-delà de la posture individualiste qu’à pris le concept du self-care, nous proposons une perspective communautaire qui s’adosse à une lecture matérialiste des rapports sociaux. Cette conférence s’interroge sur les pratiques de solidarité pour pallier à l’injustice et à la violence de nos conditions dans une société postcoloniale.

Hajer Ben Boubaker est une militante et chercheuse indépendante. Elle est diplômée en Histoire et Sciences Politiques de la Sorbonne et en Genre, Politique et Sexualité de l’EHESS. Ses recherches portent sur les politiques migratoires européennes et leurs influences dans les pays de la rive sud de la Méditerranée. Elle est la fondatrice du podcast Vintage Arab qui interroge la place des transmissions culturelle et politiques en diaspora et qui s’attache à se réapproprier un patrimoine, loin des imaginaires orientalistes.

Dawud Bumaye est une militante afroféministe. Ses travaux visent principalement à articuler les rapports de race, classe, sexe/genre et sexualités. Engagée sur les luttes noires et de la diaspora, antiracistes décoloniales, contre les violences policières et anticarcérales, anticapitalistes, matérialistes, féministes et « queers of color », Dawud Bumaye est co-fondatrice du collectif « Queer et trans révolutionnaire » et a exercé la profession d’éditrice.

The Funambulist est un magazine anglophone qui interroge les politiques des espaces et des corps. Nous espérons fournir une plateforme utile au sein de laquelle les voix de militant·e·s, universitaires, artistes et architectes peuvent se rencontrer et construire des solidarités a diverses échelles géographiques. A travers des articles, des entretiens, des oeuvres d’art et des projets architecturaux, nous assemblons une modeste archive pour les luttes anticoloniales, antiracistes, queer et féministes.

The post Listen to The Funambulist Lectures #01 Hajer Ben Boubaker & Dawud Bumaye /// Se Réparer, Collectivement appeared first on THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE.