Utajované násilí: Architektura a francouzská válka v Alžírsku

During the Algerian Revolution (1954–1962), or the Algerian War of Independence, French civil and military authorities fundamentally reorganized the urban and rural areas of Algeria, drastically transformed its built environment, rapidly constructed new infrastructure, and established new settlements in strategic locations. The purpose of all this was to protect French economic interests in Algeria and to keep Algeria under French colonial rule, which had been in place since 1830.

This exhibition focuses only on one aspect of these territorial transformations, namely the construction of military-administered camps, dubbed centres de regroupement (re-grouping or gathering centers), located in rural areas of Algeria. The creation of these spaces stemmed from the establishment of forbidden zones – spaces allowing unrestricted use of firearms – and triggered massive forced relocations of local populations. Special military units called Sections administratives spécialisées (SAS, Specialized Administrative Sections) oversaw the evacuation of forbidden zones, the re-grouping of the Algerian population, the building of temporary and permanent camps, the transformation of a large number of permanent camps into villages, and at the same time monitored the daily life of Algerian civilians. The aim of this re-grouping was to separate Algerians from the influence of national liberation fighters and to complicate their potential psychological and material support.

The exact number of camps built during the war, the people forced to leave their homes, or the destroyed villages is still debated today. An estimate from 1960 calculated the number of such violently displaced individuals at 2,157,000. Another evaluation from 1961 states that 2,350,000 people were gathered in militarily controlled settlements, and an additional 1,175,000 were forced to leave their original homes due to ongoing and violent military operations, totaling more than 3.5 million violently displaced individuals. Another figure from February 15, 1962, just a few weeks before Algeria gained independence, states that by the beginning of the Algerian Revolution in 1954, about 3,740 camps had been established.

The exhibition "Secret Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria" is based on French military photographs and films created by propaganda teams from the Service cinématographique des armées (SCA, Army Cinematographic Office) and from other public and private sources. It addresses certain aspects of the evacuation of the Algerian rural population and the construction processes as well as living conditions in the aforementioned camps. It uncovers the methods used by the French colonial government to attempt to change the military purpose of the camps in response to the media scandal of 1959. It reveals the internal relationships between architecture, military measures, colonial policy, and the planned production and distribution of visual records. Today, the SCA is referred to as Établissement de communication et de production audiovisuelle de la défense (ECPAD, Office of Defense Communication and Audiovisual Production) and is still active in war zones where French troops are involved.

Curator: Samia Henni

Samia Henni is a professor of the history of architecture and urban development at Cornell University. She is the author of the book Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (gta Verlag, Zurich 2017).

Acknowledgments: Michel Cornaton, Mary McLeod, Lucie Moriceau, Véronique Pontillon, Sabine Sarwa, Nadine Schütz, Pascal Schwaighofer, Daniel Sommer, Philip Ursprung, Damien Vitry, Clément Willemin, Pierre Willemin