HISTORY OF HISTORY (THE)

of FATMI Mounir

FRANCE, 2006, 00:37:24

Production : FATMI Mounir
Genre : Video art, Documentary, Portrait
Keyword : History, Politics, Racism, Society

Summary :
"In his preface for « Damnés de la terre », written in 1961, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote: “The native has only one choice: servitude or sovereignty.”That represents the conviction of the Black Panthers movement. That movement, founded at the end of the 1960s in the United States, embodied the revolutionary ideal in all its power, together with drifts to authoritarianism and violence.New York, 1960, Dak’Art, 2006: Mounir Fatmi creates an untimely connection, which reflects his way of always questioning meaning, revealing ambivalences, denials, paradoxes and ambiguities. Here, he ventures to question the current events concerning the Black Panthers. « We want lands, bread, houses, education, clothing, justice and peace ». That is what was written in the article 10 of the foundation manifesto. And if you do not give us what we want, we will come and take it. The demands of the Black Panthers, like those of Malcolm X, the Black Muslims or the Black Power, calling for violence as a form of self-defence, can be found nowadays in Africa and elsewhere when the issue of post-colonialism is addressed. The post-colonialism issue cannot be disconnected from the immigrants’ issue. This community – destitute but insisting people – that needs lands, bread, houses, education, clothing, justice and peace." Evelyne Toussaint, lecturer at the University of Pau-Pays de l’Adour, December 2005

to print