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Summary in English
Artists residence and Guest studio in Lyon
International Trade Law
by Pierre Alain Gourion and Georges Peyrard
Justice and its Double
Azouz BEGAG, Justice in da Buff
2. Reluctances towards photography
3. Travelling and bringing back
5. Establischment of the truth
6. Anybody ?
Patrice Giorda, a French painter
Pierre Alain Gourion, From Justice to Nudes
*
Pierre Alain Gourion, Poetry
Manhattan
Ben, LISTEN TO MY SONGS
*
Mariana Flores and Eduardo Cappussi
tango dancers
*
TRAVELLING
La belle France (for american people)
by Azouz Begag
(6) ANYBODY ? 
Justice in da buff
by Azouz Begag
(5) Establishment of the truth
Here, in the North, everything has to be written. It was a whole new world for me. In the country where my cultural references come from, eloquence matters. Spoken words are more powerful than the written ones. For the act of marriage, old men of the spouses? families meet round the table and, using words, make the match. Then words are the characteristics of a sacred ritual. They are literally rooted in the mind of the person who says them and the one who hears them. I am a dreamer. My country is a place where the youngsters who get married only think about love and nothing else. A country where don't need paper, but just water, when the words are pronounced. Magical words echo through the borders of generations. And they last. I often ask myself why in the North, people make prenuptial agreements? I found the answer: to protect themselves. They are scared. Scared of the future, of what they will become. They're getting married, yes, but what if one day they don't love each other anymore? Who will get the fridge, the washing machine, the savings? The car? The kids? Then you call a solicitor. As far as my marriage goes, I never got to know which settlement was picked for us. I have never been interested in those things. I am off-settlement. To me, marriage and settlement don't match. I love, I marry, in Ernest Hemingway's passionate way. We talked about solicitors during the wedding. They invited a solicitor to my wedding! They asked me who was mine? I laughed. I didn't have any. To manage which assets? The three thousand franc retirement pension my father used to get during his lifetime? The culture shock took shape in the idea of time. They day I was getting married, I didn't want to think about the day I would get divorced. The day you come into the world, you don't think about the day you're going to die. When the weather is nice, I don't dread the cloud and the rain. But the justice system, solicitors, lawyers, judges, solemnly declare that even though it's great to be carried away by the heat of passion, and the youthful horses, still you shouldn't forget to protect your rear. To protect yourself. To guarantee. To secure. And for all those verbs, the words themselves are not enough. They ought to be written in a formal contract. It's amazing the extent to which Justice is based on formal written language, formulas, technical and obsolete words? Justice kills love the day she was born. In the North, safety is not to be trifled with. I am a dreamer. Dreams don't give a damn about the lack of safety. I was told a piece of my shirt was stuck in the mesh. My body slipped into the mudflat. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF TRUTH In the criminal courtroom I've been frequenting regularly for several days, for the first time of my life, what I find the most striking are the games (the looks between the judge, the prosecutor, the lawyers, the clerk and the defendant). Or the accused. The den of Justice is a telescoping place for meaningful looks, eloquent looks, alternating with the words spoken between the one and the other. Mechanical words, that are procedural, implacable. Words of democracy, because everyone here is looking for one valuable thing: the establishment of truth. Justice has to be done. You meticulously analyze the facts. You classify the evidence. You study the argumentation of the accused, his counsel, the victim. An accused appear at the stand. A young man, alone. He didn't have a lawyer. He caused a car accident when he was drunk driving. He maintains he didn't drink that much. He swears he's telling the truth, that's it. He can't say anything else. Quite obviously, he is unable to find the words for a proper defence. He speaks fast, his voice sounds strangled, quivering. Behind his big round black glasses, the judge says to him those are not relevant arguments. He asks him to defend himself more seriously because there are heavy charges against him for which he will have to answer. The young man got flabbergasted, staring at the judge. He said once again that his spoken truth constituted his arguments, and then he stopped, floored, without speech. He has the feeling he defended himself by simply maintaining that: "it wasn't me". The judge grabbed his pen again, immerses himself in the file one more time, and passes the sentence: he conforms to the Public Prosecutor who demanded a suspended three month imprisonment and one year driving ban. The young man doesn't understand anything. He flies into a rage. He is told that it would be all, he might go. "This is not Justice, this"? No matter how hard he can cry inside, there's nothing somebody could do for him. In the courthouse, the audience murmured a little to protest. "That's a bit much!", whispers a young man sitting next to me. Here you track the truth down. By all means: with the eyes, precise questions, deep silences. Most of the time, the accused tries to foil the judges? fierce questions, which are usually binary, he was told his answers would have big consequences on the sentence. So when the judge asked him how many glasses of alcohol he had before he took the wheel, he answered two or three, hesitating, nodded, stuttered. He probably had more, but he couldn't admit it. He swayed between the numbers, before he declared that, actually, he didn't remember, the events dated back to several months ago, sometimes several years and the memories faded away. The judge looked at him straight in the eye to see the truth. He ended up nodding along. He is used to this kind of blocked behaviour. He often must be frustrated to be unable to get it, this tremendous truth. Sadly, the accused don't willingfully cooperate. He has the responsibility for settling without knowing everything, following his conviction.
Justice in da Buff
by Azouz Begag
(4) Justice, Echo
Justice in da buff
by Azouz Begag
(2) RELUCTANCES TOWARDS PHOTOGRAPHY 
I never liked taking pictures. To me, it's almost a natural defense, which has its reasons in the heart of my own foundations. It's been inside of me ever since I was born, in the mists of my time. Of course there is a "cultural" explanation to this defense, and I have to try giving it some substance, by having an endoscopy of it. Is it my Arabian, Muslim origins that make me feel suspicious when it comes to photography? Maybe there's something about it, since any representation of God is forbidden in Islam. But I would like to go further than this first explanation, that is not always true, as I noticed it myself on a trip to Syria and Lebanon, a few years ago while I was accompanying a photographer. People, and especially children, had lots of fun when seeing photographers and they spontaneously asked to stand before the camera to be "shot". Sometimes, after the shooting, some of them came back to ask for a present or money for their pose . But generally, I haven't noticed any reluctance towards photography itself in these Muslim Arabian people. Therefore, what restrains me? Many reasons, related to my traveler, scientific research worker, writer status. First, it's all about the movement. To me, life is movement and death is fixity, stillness, steadiness. It is in the movement the liveliness- that we regenerate, meet the otherness that changes the way we see people and, in return, the way we see ourselves. Movement is fluidity, a journey, a human adventure. On the contrary, I associate fixity with plant life, supposed to remain in the same pot or territory. The human being, because of his amazing ability to move in space, has the supreme privilege of changing his "point of view", then improving his relation to the world. By discovering the multiple distances of observation between him and his environment, he is able, gradually, to become more tolerant. Movement is the experience of time. Men's ageing process slowly leads them to humility. Silence. All of these explanations suggest me to say that, for a globe-trotter, I never took any picture. I still don't. Photography is attraction, capture. The straight-jacket for emotions, splendors. Taking a picture is like picking a poppy. You break the stem and it?s over, you kill the beauty. And there is the "burden" of the camera. A camera is a strain on me. It forces you to have a bag, or a shoulder bag ? of course I know there are compact cameras nowadays- and even to carry it across your shoulder with the strap around your neck. That's where the shoe pinches: the thing itself prevents me from walking around, casually , freely, in the streets of the city. It saddles me, in every sense of the word. If I think about this, I realize that what I'm actually trying to avoid, when I'm abroad, is to be "seen" like a passenger by local people because of my camera. This thing bothers me because it's meaningful. It says I don't belong here and don't wish to, my camera and I are just passing by to take something, pictures of you and your environment, which we are going to bring back home and display. This interpretation does not square with the idea I have of my own representation in other people's space. I always travel with a free hand, no camera, open to things and to people. I have the illusionary feeling to be more available for people, more attentive to them. And above all, I feel fully here. The camera coldly reminds me of the country I come from and to where I will probably return, even just to have my pictures developed. With no camera and no film, I give a different meaning to my trip, my presence. I am totally dedicated to the local people, to meet them. I accept the risk of becoming one of them, of staying with them. Of staying there. Of never coming back to where I come from. This is what is at stake on a trip. It makes a person out of me, who can be completely transfigured by the others. The real trip is the one from which you never return the way you left. We move on, is spite of everything else. I always laugh when I see Japanese tourist groups, in Europe, who are meticulously circling a monument while shooting it frenetically. Each one of them is equipped with a camera, more or less bulky, more or less sophisticated. I laugh, but deep inside, I find it irritating. The relationship is one-sided. Unbalanced. It smacks of factories and it immediately reminds me of those big Japanese brands which have tourists as ambassadors, sandwich-men in a way. I think they don't see the people around them, the Natives , who are going about their daily business, and that's precisely what I like most to see when I travel. I don't see the "monuments", but only the people. The tourists I'm thinking of usually have the monument as their one single goal. The steady thing that fully dedicates itself to the picture. They shoot it, box it, go back home, show the picture to their friends and say: I've been there. In the landscape of course. The picture slots in between the locals and the visitors. When you take pictures like that, you don't speak, you don't speak to people. You don't need to meet the inhabitants, to learn their language, to understand them. The camera protects the visitor from the risk to face the otherness. It allows you to go back home totally spotless. One exception: when the visiting tourist get jostled by the native when their cameras are swiped by snatch theft, like people say in the robber jargon. I saw many funny scenes in Naples. Then I start to appreciate the camera. It caused human beings to get in touch. I don't want to draw a caricature. Having said that, I know that the photographers who take, on their own, pictures of people in public places have to meet them, talk to them, explain what they're doing, translate, so they can share with people. I know many of them...
Travel a new world
Fly Marijuana
J'ai regardé les publicités publiées par ce blog, et je me suis souvenu d'un poème écrit en anglais en 1989, lors d'un voyage aux Etats-Unis, patrie de la pub.
Tout s'est mélangé, mélé : hier et aujourd'hui, rèves et réalités, droits et interdits, désespoirs et rèves cheap. Consommation de biens virtuels ou concrets. Le monde ne s'est pas arrangé depuis. Ben Hash.
Travel a New World
That is what
Advised
The advertisement from
The United States of
America
I tried
Took buses and planes
Plenty rides
Listened saw smelled
Talked a lot
Sun burnt me
and the men And the words
The problems touched me
Blacks jews poors talked to me
Skyscrapers frightened me
And the ways and the cars
and the strengh the money
Did I do my duty
Af well-thinking tourist ?
Do I know ?
But the famous new world
Witch has opened to me
Far from the postal cards
And the coca cola
Is the one of the dope
Travel
Travel a new world
Fly marijuana
I’m not set on one particular model: naked, not naked, beautiful, ugly . I don’t mind , I would put myself in the jurors’ shoes!
François La Phuong, Avocat
 Don’t shoot judges What a strange and difficult job it is to be a judge. At the very beginning of this project I had an idea which seemed natural to me: to take lawyers and judges as my clothed models, so complementary are those two professions in a democracy. No lawyers without judges, no defence without a man hounded by public wrath. No true legal system without cross-examination. And to the question which we are so often asked : - How can a lawyer defend such heinous criminals ? It is easy for us to answer by asking another question which elicits a positive answer : - Do you agree that every man, whatever he has done, has the right to be defended ? (13)  I had no trouble with the colleagues I contacted: after some explaining, they all, men and women, willingly agreed, often in a warm, amused and gratifying way. The reaction of the magistrate friends I contacted was quite different. One of them, albeit a former lawyer himself replied : - I only express myself through the judgments I pass ! Hell, this razor sharp answer left no room for comment. Mezzo voce, I thought to myself, with that hint of rebelliousness which characterizes lawyers whenever they come up against judges, an essential function of theirs, that his way of expressing himself somehow lacked variety and humour. But never mind. Another one, a former youth worker, now President of the Magistrates’ Court, explained that although he thought the project was fun, he couldn’t take part : - Can you picture me questioning or bawling out a sniggering prisoner who says to me: you’re the one who posed next to a naked woman, aren’t you ?  All right. Yet another, who has no hesitation in playing music at night with an Arab –oh my goodness!- explained to me by day that the obligation of restraint which applies to every public servant made my suggestion – tempting though he found it- impossible to carry out with judges. Maybe he was right : lawyers have more freedom and although they are bound by law to their professional order and confidentiality (which are meant to protect their clients and function and not them), they only have to answer to their clients and the President of their Bar in the case of professional misconduct.  (13) Alas, the America of Mr. BUSH and GUANTANAMO has not given the answer to this question that one might have expected from that democracy… It is being debated. | ||||
| So I had to make do with them, considering them to be symbols of the whole legal profession. That was the reason why my friend VERNERET and I wanted to photograph François La Phuong and his mug (this brilliant lawyer had a stroke which robbed him of the power of speech, he from whom words used to flow like water): he embodies a social function that is pivotal and present all over the world – wherever free defence, true journalism and multipartism exist, often threatened, an everlasting quest. The quest for democracy is never ending, that’s how it is and it will go on! Yet I would have liked to shoot a portrait of BURGAUD sitting on his chair, twisted, tortured, in front of his tormentors, our Members of Parliament and cameramen. On the left-hand page there would be lots of children naked in their lies and their false innate innocence. Paradoxes.  Stolen pictures It was at the flea market, one Sunday morning round about the year 2000. The stalls were shining with a thousand odds and ends, spare parts, printed circuits, socks, kitchenware, make-up, all kinds of exotic products from the technical Western world, from the Muslim Maghreb, from the depths of Africa. We were in France, in Algiers, in Mali. A colourful, loud-mouthed, buoyant rabble. I was shopping, some tea here, a box there, lipsticks for the models, why not this cheese-grater…  Around noon, I went to the local bistrot, next to the tent where the head of security, a huge mountain of a man, a bearded North African, an integrated fundamentalist cop, kept an eye on things. A pint of lager, and a merguez sausage, swallowed in haste. It was raining on the bar window, hey, why not take a shot of the droplets meandering all the way down the window pane, with the souk in the background. And the atmosphere in the bar too, on an impulse, just as you take a few notes, draw a sketch or have a fag. A kid came up to me, about fifteen years old, good-looking and aggressive, as they are at that age. - Whatcha doin’? - …. - Taking pictures ? - Well, yes ! - But you got no right to take pictures, you fucking sod ! You a copper or what ? - No, I’m not a cop, I’ve just taken a few shots, the window pane, the cafe, that’s all, nothing wrong with that… - Yeah there is you cunt ! You didn’t ask the women who’re there ! You’re a fucking paedophile!  It was obviously the worst insult he could think of. I burst out laughing (not being a paedophile) and asked my neighbour, a thirty-year-old Arab who was watching the scene with some embarrassment and a hint of compassion for me if I had done something wrong. - Listen, you don’t bother me. But I’m an Algerian tourist, so the problems between Arab French people and French people are none of my business. | ||||
| The teenager was at it again, insulting me even more; the bar owner didn’t say a word and neither did the customers, who were discreetly watching the row. - You’ll see, you bastard, as soon as you get out of here, me and me mates over there, we’ll crack your head open and nick your photo gear, I swear! Outside, through the window, I could see over a dozen teenagers, the aforesaid mates staring at me aggressively. I turned to the bar owner, who had kept a cautious silence: - Is it not allowed to take snapshots in your bar ? - You should’ve asked, Mister, it isn’t done … I had to go and see Mr. Bearded Mountain security man and demand that one of his men walk back to my car with me. Didn’t feel like getting beaten up by a mob of fifteen against one and having my Nikon Coolpix nicked into the bargain. Big Beard okayed it but rather grudgingly, he wouldn’t have minded that voyeur getting thrashed in fact… I had made a mistake: not getting accepted in the environment first of all. The hazards of stolen pictures. A failure.  What a strange and wonderful job it is to write. I entrust my quill, sorry, my computer and its well-meaning software, with snatches of memory, attempts at thinking (legally an attempt is punishable), wishful thinking, a hotch-potch of warmed-up leftovers. I do it in the night, words bring more words, you’ll see whether they may suit you a little. I’ll make a show of modesty. Make an attempt at fantasy.  What a strange and wonderful job it is to publish. You can bring out some authors, spread ideas, launch new debates or old refrains. You can sing with the world, create your own little music. Have a look at our photographs, at Marie-Ange LE SAINT’s masks,  read the astonishing improvised speeches of our model lawyers / (which, reading between the lines, paint a broad picture of the function of defence),
Gilles VERNERET’s text and Azouz BEGAG’s too, not because he is a minister, but because he is a writer. Hail, citizen reader, it’s your turn to judge. Villeurbanne, 9th October 2006 |
