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G8 - Geneva

Lire Frantz Fanon

Lire Frantz Fanon - Genève, pendent le G8/Evian, 2003

Reading Frantz Fanon - During the G8 meeting/Evian in Geneva, 2003

 

 

Video clip with extracts - 100 seconds

 

On June 2nd and 3rd I was holding a FRANTZ FANON Reading Seminar in Geneva. For years I have been reading "De la Violence" avec people interested. I tape it, I photograph it, I put it in my archive. Due to the fact that we had no place to go, we did it in the street, next to the "Usine" in Geneva, that just got brutally raided by the police the day before. The setting was also significant as it was hte most prominent 24 drug selling hot spot of Geneva with exclusive drug-catering by North Africans. I was given the explanation that the police only tolerated black drug dealers, but no white ones.

On the 2 days about 10 different people joined us thought only 4 people more or less really participated. My thanking goes to the participants.

 

Other Fanon Readings have been held over the last couple of years in France, in GB, in New York, in Germany and in other places. There also excisted a www.ganahlfanon.com site though it was closed down due to financial restrictions.

 

These two sessons were in particular interesting to me since we were directly confronted not only with police brutality, but also with a deliquent North African / French immigrant community of drug dealers that was standing and walking around us while reading on the floor. The night before I during the confrontations with the police, 3 French/North African men attacked me from behind in order to steal my digital camera Iwas filming the events. Of course, these guys used the quasi-anarchic conditions during the fight with riot police unites - German ones, Zurich ones and Geneva ones -in order to get these luxerious toys. I wasn't mad at them, just surprisd and understood that they were right. Over a period of time, they followed me and talked to me about the quality of the camera, that they wanted to film me etc.. and told me even what to film. I was thrown on the floor with 3 guys trying to take me out but was able to keep the camera since I had the advantage of holding the camera on a hand strip which was difficult to remove. Somehow the class and racial devide omnipresent in Western Europe expressed themself almost according the writings of Fanon.

 

 

 

after some warning that the police was again to encircle the Usine - with 4000 members - we decided to continue reading "De la violence" / On violence/ on the other side of the Rhone.

 

 

 

Video clip with extracts - 100 seconds

index

A way with books

G8 - Geneva

Frantz Fanon Reading