 Well, thanks for coming. Well, I will concentrate this talk really on three pieces of work, one which is in the exhibition, obviously, which was done in 2002, this one. And what I will call a trilogy, kind of three videos, which are part of a trilogy, then there is this one which is in the exhibition and two other ones. And I think I will concentrate on these ones because they're very much around the same things, really. But just to summarize quickly what my work is about in general, it's very much around identity politics in some ways, much more than around women issue, although women issue have been central in my work. It's becoming less so. Obviously, the work I've shown now in the exhibition is the work which is five years dated. And obviously, the work I'm doing now has totally shifted in terms of its presentation, its themes, et cetera, et cetera. But nevertheless, those pieces, I think, are still important. And for many reasons, but one reason, obviously, is because it's about family. A lot of the work I was doing at the time was kind of looking at the family, and especially women within the family. And my mother was born in Algeria. At the time when Algeria was French, then that kind of informed a lot of my work. And then I was born in Paris. I'm the kind of a daughter of immigrants because my parents came to immigrate in France in 62. And then I immigrated myself to England in 86, where I gave birth to a daughter and other children, too, but to Zuleika, then, which she's in the video. And then it's really the story of free generation of women. And it's also about free languages, sorry, Arabic, which is my mother's language, my mother tongue, which is French, and my daughter's mother tongue, which is English. It's about also, as I said, free women of different ages and free different countries and free generations. The way it's actually at the moment displayed in the space, it's been displayed not in the right way, although the orders of the screen have been mixed up. That's the right display, really. And for the ones who haven't had time to listen to the piece of work, really, it's on the first screen, you have me and my mom having a kind of fluent and intimate conversation, both in our mother tongue. I speak to her in French and she replied in Arabic. And that's always been the way we've been kind of communicating in just two languages. And it looks really weird to some people because they're like, why do they speak two different languages? But that's, you know, I call it myself it's a kind of part of a diasporic language, something that we create, perhaps, once we've moved from one place to the other. On the second screen, funny enough, and consciously, we have recreated this kind of way of communicating with my daughter, but I speak to her in French and she replied in English. And that's a very major way we communicate. Then again, that kind of very strange. But if you listen to the piece, you'll see that we vary at ease and very friends. It's not, you know, there's no problem in understanding. The problem comes much more about speaking, perhaps, you know. Although I can speak Arabic, my Arabic is basic, but my understanding of Arabic is very fluent. And, you know, it's just to, you know, we always think that language is something that you have or you don't have. But sometimes there is that spacing between where you can perhaps understand but not speak of as well as possible speak it and not understand it. On the first screen, you have then my daughter and my mother, therefore daughter and grandmother together speaking. And then there is a cleavage. There is no possibility of discussion really because my daughter speaks English, my mother speaks Arabic, and then they can communicate. And if you again look at the video piece, you'll see that although on the two first screen, we really face each other and speak to each other. On the first screen, they can't look anymore. They keep looking outside and outside. So look to the camera, obviously. And who is behind the camera? It's me, the mother. So in some ways I become the translator, the interpreter, the mediator, you know. And this piece of work for me was very much about oral history and oral stories, the way, you know, stories have passed on from one generation to another. And I think in many countries in Africa and especially in North Africa, I think oral history is very important. A lot of people, my mother never went to school. She can read and write. Then the way we write all stories is very much through storytelling. Then there is a story in some ways in those two first screen. It's me and asking my mom very much information about my schooling in France. So my mom gives me all this information. And a very basic question as, you know, like how was I doing at school? Who was taking me to school or picking me up? And my mom gives me this information. And on the second screen, you have my daughter asking this question to me. Who was picking me up from school? Who? And then you see that, if you understand the languages, obviously, you see that I'm repeating what information my mother's given me. And on the third one, obviously, there is no possibility of communication. So although it's a piece around to do with women, it's very much a piece to do with intimacy and translation and language and communication. I mean, some people get sad when they see the piece of work, especially when they listen to the third screen, because I saw it so sad, you know, the granddaughter and the grandmother can't communicate. Isn't it sad? And I want to reiterate that, although they don't verbally communicate, there are many other ways they do communicate and they do have a very strong relationship. It's not a verbal one. Then again, for me, it was very much trying to kind of talk about different ways of communication. And then after this piece of work, carrying on with this idea of oral history or narrative, you know, telling stories, I've decided to make a piece of work with my mother, whereby I will ask her to tell me about the Algerian war and her involvement as a resistant fighter or a Mujahideen, as we call it in Arabic, her role as a woman during the war. And although she was only in her 20s when the war started there, she had a place and did things for the Algerian liberation, really. And for me, it was very important to record this information she was giving me. And I centred the interview between her and I. First of all, into languages. And again, it's me asking the video piece last 10 minutes roughly. Me, I asked question in French to my mother and she responds in English to me, I mean, sorry, in Arabic to me. And for me, it was important again to portray those two languages because obviously Arabic is a language of the colonized, because they were the one colonized in Algeria, and French is a language of the colonizer. Then obviously, I've become the legacy of that kind of colonization. Then it was for me very important to portray how to use those two languages in the video. And the piece exists with subtitle in French but in English also because I've shown the piece in English-speaking countries or in France. But I've asked my mom specific question about her role as a woman and the role of children. Anything to do in relation to the woman's home if you want, traditionally, obviously, at the time. Then she speaks about the way kids were treated by the French army, how women were raped, et cetera, et cetera. So it's kind of quite difficult piece, quite moving piece, but quite difficult too. And that's how I decided that it would be a part of the same body of work in some ways because it was very much about language and telling stories really. And the third piece, which actually was the first piece where I involved a man in my work because in the past my work very much involved me but involved women in the family, but never any men. And for the first time I was including my dad. And that was actually the final piece in that whole body of work where I actually was using the family. After that I've moved on and I did work looking at landscape. Then no people anymore, no family anymore, but just the Algerian landscape, the seascape, and also the countryside landscape. And here again it's a kind of a complicated installation, three screen, and it's two actually on the second image here. You see you have two screen on one wall and the other one of me opposite those two screens. And in the middle you have two benches with speakers that allows you, if you do understand Arabic, to listen to them individually. And if you don't understand Arabic you can also stand in other point in the room whereby you hear the language, you know. Again it exists in English and French. Although it's been translated in Japanese also after it's been to Tokyo. Then it's quite interesting how, you know, because of what language, how after traveling it's been also taking its own kind of path into the translation. But basically I asked again my father and my mom to talk about the Algerian war. But not only about that, I was very interested in them speaking about the life in France. Why after in 62 winning the war and the independence, why did they come to France as immigrant? I mean, it's obvious that was for many reasons, you know. But I wanted them to express that. And it was very much the first time for them to talk to their children or to their daughter, me, about that experience. We grew up in France very much not told anything about the Algerian war. I guess because my parents didn't want to kind of disturb us, we were living in France. Why tell us about some of the suffering they had gone through? But, and it was fantastic, they did that, that kind of things and very much for that. But same time as I grew up, I very much felt that there was something missing, like a piece of the puzzle which was not there. And I needed to kind of, you know, find. But also, I mean, for the ones, very much for me anyway, when I grew up in France, it was in 63, there was a lot of racism, you know, France just had lost Algeria. And I can tell you, if you were an Algerian in France at the time, it was pretty tough, yeah? And the reason I'm saying that, you have to understand that as I grew up in France, I was told I was in French. Yeah, I was not French. And when I was going to Algeria, I was not Algerian either. Then this kind of the whole issue about authenticity, what does it mean to be French? What does it mean to be Algerian? Therefore, it was very important for me to make my parents speak about, you know, some things that I couldn't understand, as I was going to Algeria, why were we treated like that? As we were in France, why were we treated like that? And everything came very clear after three hours of interviews with them. And I call it interview because it was pretty much like that. The only thing for the piece itself, I removed my voice and I just kept my parents speaking. And out of three hours, I kept 20 minutes for each of them. And, you know, I discovered things why my granddad had an eye missing, you know, because he got tortured by the French, for example. And things like that suddenly kind of put into perspective what I was going through in France and in Algeria. And again, the language is very important there because although I asked my father to speak in Arabic, he keeps going back to French. Then through the whole, his whole conversation, he keeps going from French to Arabic, Arabic, French, et cetera. My mom, because she was a housewife very much at home and let's expose to French community if you want in France. Her Arabic is always there, you know, she doesn't go back to France. She, in some way, she doesn't speak French. And as you can see, mother tongue, the way she converts with me is very much in Arabic, although she's lived in France 35 years or so. They've now both gone back to Algeria and, you know, and for me that's one of the reasons I decided to kind of finalize this piece with them. I mean, I've pretty much said quite a lot about those three pieces of work. I can talk perhaps where my work is going now. I don't know if you were, but there's been a civil war in Algeria that lasted, well, I don't know. Some people argue it's still not finished, but I will say roughly 12 years, you know, civil war. And in 2003, I went back to, no, 2002 actually, I went back to Algeria. I've not gone there for 12 years. And as I went back there, it totally kind of shifted my own practice because all the work I was doing before was very much about stories that I will get from my parents of things were very much happening in France or in England, I'm based in London, then, you know. And for the first time I was actually going there and I was actually seeing things around me, seeing the family, you know, just having a feel of the country, you know. So that totally changed my own practice because I decided to kind of really use the material that Algeria or the land itself was giving me. So that's why I started to do a body of work to do more with landscape and traveling very much about modes of transport whereby I will use I've done pieces of work to do with a boat journey from Marseille to Algiers or strange journeys or plain journeys from London to Heathrow, London Algiers. Then the work is very different. Although it's still around the film of identity politics, I will say, it doesn't touch on gender issue anymore. If you want to say so, but as a female artist, I believe that even if you don't possibly do obvious work on women issue, it's still there, you know. It's still in the work. I'm very much interested also in doing work about what we call les pieds noirs, the French were left in, lived in Algeria and had left most of them in 62 sometime before. So that's the next coming work at the moment. I'm kind of working on a big trilogy, a film trilogy to do with kind of this relationship with past relationship and current relationship between past between France and Algeria.