Housing Pharmacology
Curated by Alya Sebti
Commissioned by Manifesta 13 Marseille
Supported by Ammodo, Drosos Foundation, Pro Helvetia
In Trait.s d'union
Manifesta 13, Marseille
Curated by Alya Sebti, Katerina Chuchalina, Stefan Kalmar

Voices: Fathi Bouaroua, Aicha Boutayeb, Vincent Girard, Habib, police officer, Laura Spica, Vendredi 13 (Monique Blanc, Bernard Nos)
Audio editing: Samia Henni
Audio postproduction and installation: Iris Rennert
Photographs: Aicha Boutayeb, Samia Henni, Kamar Idir, Vendredi 13, various archives

Publication: Samia Henni (texts editing), Laura Spica (copyediting), Flora Fettah (proofreading), Good and Cheap Art Translators (Translation), Anbar Oreizi-Esfahani (Mapping), ékho studio (Claire Bonnet, Charlie C. Thomas, Graphic concept, typesetting and design)
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September 11 - November 29, 2020
Musuem of Marseille History
Marseille, France

Exhibition Virtual Tour
Exhibition Description


"Pharmacology" is a condition that stipulates both poison and remedy. Drawing on Jacques Derrida's essay, Plato's Pharmacy, which proposed that writing is a pharmakon, Bernard Stiegler theorized and broadened the idea of "pharmacology" to incorporate a political analysis of and intervention into exploitative capitalist systems and the destructive tendencies of consumerist societies. Following from Stiegler, "pharmacology" can thus inform the ethics and politics of care.

Based on various conversations with Marseille's inhabitants after the lockdown was lifted in France, Housing Pharmacology exposes and juxtaposes the poisons and cures that the presence or absence of dwellings engendered in Marseille's neighbourhoods. It reflects on the histories of the right to housing as well as human lives and deaths, examines the conditions of the unhoused in the streets of Marseille, scrutinises the status of democratic psychiatry and housing environments, questions the role that the built environment plays in guaranteeing self-care and self-subsistence and digs into the housing policies for migrant workers who participated in France's housing construction industry and rapid economic growth during Les Trente Glorieuses (The Glorious Thirty), the thirty years from 1945 to 1975 following the Vichy Regime and World War II.

Housing Pharmacology offers multiple fragments and competing visions about Marseille's spatial inclusions and exclusions through lived experiences, audiovisual records and published sources that interrogate the past and aspire to a more viable future. It ultimately endeavours to create potential traits d'union.s between story-telling and history-writing, between the duties of institutions and the rights of human beings.


Many thanks to Noureddine Abouakil, Monique Blanc, Claire Bonnet, Fathi Bouaroua, Aicha Boutayeb, Fabrice Denise. Thomas Engelbert, Frantz Fanon, Flora Fettah, Vincent Girard, Habib, Hani Henni, Kamar Idir, Lukas Kueng, Marina Otero Verzier, Bernard Nos, David Penaguilla, Police officer, Iris Rennert, Jérome Rieder, Alya Sebti, Laura Spica, Erik Schieweck, Pascal Schwaighofer, Bernard Stiegler, Dalila Talhi, Tatiana Tarrago, and Charlie C. Thomas.

© Jeanchristophe Lett / Manifesta, 2020

Right to Housing
Curated by Curated by Katerina Chuchalina
Commissioned by Manifesta 13 Marseille
In Trait.s d'union
Manifesta 13, Marseille
Curated by Alya Sebti, Katerina Chuchalina, Stefan Kalmar
August 28 - November 29, 2020
Grobet-Labadié Museum
Marseille, France
Preview


The history of housing in Marseille is intrinsically related to the history of its harbour, colonisation, labour force, migration and the rapid industrialisation and reconstruction efforts that followed World War II. The installation invites visitors to pause and reflect on the various housing typologies of Marseille which are not necessarily displayed in museums or given a forum in public institutions. Henni focuses particularly on shelters that host unhoused, badly housed and rehoused populations. Located in the antechamber of Musée Grobet-Labadié, Right to Housing confronts visitors with their own image, the villa's interior and collections, and the living spaces of those who might have worked for the Grobet-Labadié family. These spaces are presented on a freestanding mirror, infinitely reflecting in the villa's built-in mirror, which testifies to the golden age of the European bourgeoisie.


Many thanks to Katerina Chuchalina, Flora Fettah, Caroline Laurent, Tifawt Loudaoui, Marina Otero Verzier, Mayura Torii, and Francesca Verga.

© HEKLER, 12 Gates Gallery, 2019







AAP Exhibitions, 2019





La Colonie, 2018






© Archive Kabinett, Berlin, 2018





© The New Istitute, Rotterdam, 2017





gta Exhibitions, ETH Zurich, 2017

Discreet Violence:
Architecture and the
French War in Algeria
Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, Philadelphia
2017 - 2019


During the Algerian Revolution (1954-1962), or the Algerian War of Independence, the French civil and military authorities profoundly reorganized Algeria's urban and rural territory, drastically transformed its built environments, rapidly implanted new infrastructure, and strategically built new settlements in order to keep Algeria under French colonial rule and protect France's interests in Algeria.

The exhibition features only one aspect of these territorial transformations: the construction of militarily controlled camps dubbed the centres de regroupement in Algeria's rural areas. These spaces resulted from the creation of the forbidden zones (free fire zones) and engendered massive forced relocations of the Algerian population. Special military units called the Sections administratives spécialisées supervised the evacuation of the forbidden zones, the regrouping of the Algerian population, the construction of temporary and permanent camps, the conversion of a number of permanent camps to villages, and monitored the daily life of Algerian civilians. The aim of this regrouping was to isolate the Algerian population from the influence of national liberation fighters and to impede possible psychological and material support.

Based on French military photographs and films produced by the propaganda teams of the Service cinématographique des armées (SCA), and other sources, the exhibition Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria features only certain aspects of the evacuation of the Algerian rural population, the building processes of the camps, and the living conditions in the camps. It disclosures the ways with which the French colonial regime attempted to divert the military purpose of the camps in the aftermath of a medial scandal of 1959. The exhibition unfolds the intrinsic relationships between architecture, military measures, colonial policies, and the planned production and distribution of visual records. Today, the SCA is called the établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la défense (ECPAD) and is still active in warzones where the French army is involved.




In Clear-Hold-Build
Curated by Shimrit Lee, Joshua Nierodzinski and Natasa Prljevic
of HEKLER
Works by Bisan Abu-Eisheh, Dena Al-Adeeb, Shabir Ahmed Baloch, Samia Henni, Khaled Jarrar, Vladimir Miladinovic, The Propeller Group, Farideh Sakhaeifar, and Hong-An Truong
September 6 - October 23, 2019
Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia
Preview




AAP Exhibitions, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
March 7 - April 11, 2019
Preview




VI PER Gallery
Prague, Czech Republic
September 26 - November 10, 2018
Preview




La Colonie
Paris, France
June 19 - July 14, 2018
Preview




Archive Kabinett
Berlin, Germany
December 19, 2017 - January 30, 2018
Preview




Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
September 8, 2017 - January 7, 2018
Preview




gta Exhibitions
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
April 13 - December 06, 2017
Preview




A conversation with Leopold Lambert, Chief Editor of the Funambuslit, about the first version of the exhibition at the gta Exhibition, ETH Zurich. Recorded on May 24, 2017.
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Many thanks to Nadine Attalah, Kader Attia, Guus Beumer, Adrian Brunold, Bruno Sousa Lopes Cancado, Paolo Caffoni, Selin Cebel, Ihwa Choi, Michel Cornaton, Kieran Donaghy, Kevin Dossinger, Luben Dimcheff, Lucas Erin, Patricia Falguieres, Nicolas Ferard, Chiara Figone, Fredi Fischli, Flora van Gaalen, Andre Hafner, Nazim Henni, Alix Hugonnier, Andrea Lee Simitch, Irena Lehkozivova, Lesley Lokko, Rachel M. Marshall, Boitumelo Mazibuko, Lucie Moriceau, Niels Olsen, Ronja Oki, Maria Park, Frank Parish, Lindsay Patrice Lavine, Jana Pavlova, Christopher T. Peppel, Natasa Petresin Bachelez, Lyn C. Pohl, Justine Pontier, Veronique Pontillon, Libby Rosa, Romy Ruegg, Sabine Sarwa, Pascal Schwaighofer, Cagla Sokullu, Joseph Spada, Beth Sprankle, Nadine Schuetz, Daniel Sommer, Barbora Spicakova, Dalila Talhi, Andre Tavares, Philippe Touron, Fred Swart, Philip Ursprung, Damien Vitry, Alexis White, Clement Willemin, Pierre Willemin, Steve Yaros and J. Meejin Yoon.

Algerian Pavilion:
News from the Past
In Something to Generate From
Curated by Madrassa Collective
Kunsthal Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
June 17 - August 17, 2016

Many thanks to Madrassa Collective, Nadine Atallah, Selma Hellal, Sofiane Hadjadj, and Yasmina Reggad.




Algeria 1961: The Paradigm of Counterinsurgency
In Travelling Communique
Curated by Armin Linke, Doreen Mende and Milica Tomic
Museum of Yugoslav History, Belgrade, Serbia
June 10 - August 17, 2014



Project Heracles
Eurafrican Bridge: Linking Africa to Europe across the Strait of Gibraltar
Curated by Domus Magazine
European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium
December 17 - 20, 2013