Zineb Sedira in Africultures

Africultures profiled the work of Zineb Sedira today in an excellent article, "Zineb Sedira: Mémoire vive" by Julie Crenn. I had the honor of meeting Zineb in January at the France-Algeria: Visualising a (Post-) Colonial Relationship conference in Manchester, UK. Her 2003 works "Mother, Father, and I" and "Retelling Histories" merge family and national histories (and painful testimonials) tracked through multi-media installations.


I plan to analyze Sedira's project alongside Leïla Sebbar's Mes Algéries en France and subsequent visual texts. As Crenn says of Sedira, and as I've written about Sebbar:
Sedira procède à des allers retours dans ce vaste patrimoine qui est le sien. En exil, l'artiste se cherche, jusqu'à revenir en Algérie en 2002. Un retour aux sources inévitable et nécessaire, après quinze années d'absence. Depuis, les paysages de son pays d'origine et les Algériens sont les sujets récurrents de son œuvre.
This aller-retour is at the heart of my work on repetition in return narratives. While many pieces of Pied-Noir written returns are primarily an "aller simple," what happens when the memory is brought back again and again through the visual? The upcoming exposition in Manchester based on the "North to North" project reworks the same idea. Check out New Cartographies: Algeria-France-UK in which Zineb Sedira will be a featured artist in 2011.

Pieds-Noirs and winemaking in Médoc

If you love French wine and the Pieds-Noirs as I do, you may enjoy this lovely review of Adrien Tramier's Château Saint Saturnin Cru Bourgeois wine from Jancis Robinson.com. I quote Tramier's biographical information below:

Tramier landed in Marseille from Algeria in 1964 and went initially to study in Montpellier, where his sister lived. He came to Bordeaux to look at a possible little wine property in the far east of the Entre-Deux-Mers region that a fellow pied noir, a lawyer, had found for him but threw dice for it with another potential buyer and lost. Further pied noir contacts found him three hectares of vines in Begadan (he now has 37 around this village and the next), which he worked half and half with the previous owner to begin with. By 1975 he had established his very particular way of working but, he added wistfully, 'I'll never be integrated here. I'd like to return to Algeria one day, and I wouldn't view it through the eyes of today but with all my childhood memories. I'm ill at ease here.'


Next time I have the privilege of staying in Maubuisson, I plan to call it a research trip and trek up to the town of Bégadan in Haut-Médoc to meet Mr. Tramier and hopefully do some wine tasting.

Jean-Jacques Jordi

I have long been thankful for the works of Jean-Jacques Jordi, a Pied Noir who writes about the migration of the Pieds Noirs from Algeria to France. On my desk (exactly as pictured on the right), I keep a copy of 1962: l'arrivée des Pieds-Noirs within arm's reach. Today he was featured in Sud Ouest in an article entitled "L'apport des pieds-noirs" which highlights the diverse roots of the Français d'Algérie and France's efforts to "franciser" Algeria. He also explains that the Pieds-Noirs arrived in France during Les Trente Glorieuses and were able to participate in the urbanization of France. (As it happens, Algeria was more modern than France in many respects in the 1950s and early 1960s. See René Domergue's L'Intégration des Pieds-Noirs dans les villages du Midi, L'Harmattan, 2005, for a detailed description of the tensions this caused.) Jordi explains that the newly arrived Pieds-Noirs were clamoring for better sewer systems and telephone lines when they arrived in France.

Jordi will be participating in a debate tonight from 5-7 p.m. in Pessac, France, if you happen to be in the area.

Algerian War Testimonials

France-Info, Les Arènes publishing, Le Nouvel Observateur, El Wattan, and FNACA are working together to collect testimonials of the Algerian War for the 50th anniversary of the war's end in 2012. You can contribute to their forum if:

"Vous étiez Algérien, Français de métropole ou d’Algérie. Entre 1954 et 1962, vous avez été appelé ou militaire d’active, vous étiez harki dans les rangs de l’armée française, vous avez milité pour le FLN, vous avez participé aux combats de l’ALN, vous étiez activiste de l’OAS ou militant contre la guerre."

They are also seeking scanned documents such as personal diaries, notebooks and photos to contribute to their online collection.

You can read some of the collected memories on the France-Info site discussion at http://www.france-info.com/forums-2010-10-21-guerre-d-algerie-vos-temoignages-492389-193-193.html