Nicolas Daubanes – Je ne reconnais pas la compétence de votre tribunal !, 2022

In collaboration with the historian Marc André

Nicolas Daubanes’ piece lays bare the fact that fragility is inseparable from strength, whether it is a material facing the weathering effects of time or that of memory facing the erasure of beings and their stories. His installation – based on research carried out by the historian Marc André over a period of almost ten years in France (Le Blanc, Lyon, Paris...) and in Algeria – is a scale reproduction of the courtroom of the permanent court of Lyon’s armed forces at Montluc Fort. This military tribunal is the place where various supporters of the National Liberation Front were tried in the context of the Algerian war, women and men, conscientious objectors, rebels, deserters; and where Algerians, members of the FLN’s shock groups, at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, were sentenced to death and guillotined. Like a police reconstruction, the work is constructed in the manner of an investigation, where visitors discover faces and archival documents drawn with magnetic iron filings, while listening to voices from today evoking the judicial sessions of yesterday. Activated by words and by the movement of people, during visits and meetings, the installation invites the public to question the competence of this military tribunal.