A Peculiar Family Album

Overview

This video is based on materials from the personal archive of Jacques Chevallier, who was mayor of Algiers from 1953 to 1958, a key period in the architectural, social and political history of Algiers. Investigating the past century’s utopian projects in the context of today’s failures, A Peculiar Family Album presents the aftermath of modernity.

From 1953 to 1957, the deputy mayor of Algiers, Jacques Chevallier, appointed French architect Fernand Pouillon to oversee the construction of social housing for the benefit of poor Algerians. With this ambitious program, Jacques Chevallier planned to reduce the blatant inequalities between Europeans and the indigenous population. This is why the estates of Diar Es-Saâda, Diar El-Mahçoul, and Climat de France all possess Pouillon’s signature style. The architect from Marseille led these building campaigns with great gusto and talent. He was able to produce cheap housing in record time using an inexpensive stone as the base material, which the departing French later nicknamed 'crying stone'.

At the same time as the launch of what the deputy mayor called the 'housing battle', another, far fiercer battle broke out: the Algerian War. The images in this film, made by Chevallier’s collaborator, don’t show this context. They focus instead on the buildings rising from the ground, site visits to inspect the work, and the countless inauguration ceremonies. Nevertheless, they do depict the making of what would transform the face of the capital city.

Menia is attached to Pouillon’s work and to questions of public space in a city and so she found these images to be precious material with which to explore a key period in the architectural, social, and political history of Algiers. Her narration is auto-fictive and interspersed with historical references, connecting the narrative to the larger history of the subject.


2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11

Co-produced by Marseille-Provence 2013 and Aix-Marseille Université, in partnership with art-cade.
Galerie des Grands Bains Douches de la Plaine