Venue: Documenta, Kassel, Germany
Date: 8 September 2007
As a participant of Documenta's "magazines project," Cabinet was invited to mount a one-day event at Documenta. Our event, which took place on 8 September 2007, was dedicated to re-examining Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan's libel suit against French philosophopher Alain Finkielkraut. This trial, which occured in Paris in 23 May 2006, was translated and published in Cabinet no. 26 with an introduction by Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman.
This event is co-organized by Sina Najafi, Eyal Weizman, and David Levine for Cabinet magazine. | © Cabinet magazine 2007
The event consisted of several elements:
1. An introduction to the trial
2. An excerpt of the radio program during which Finkielkraut initially accused Sivan of being a Jewish anti-Semite
3. Excerpts from Claude Lanzman's Shoah and Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi's Route 181
4. A re-enactment of the trial in its entirety, directed by David Levine.
5. A debate with Eyal Sivan, Eyal Weizman, Thomas Keenan, and David Levine, moderated by Sina Najafi
© Cabinet magazine, 2007
In May 2006, a libel suit filed by Paris-based Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan against French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut was finally brought to court. The trial, at which a number of well-known intellectuals were called to testify, concerned comments Finkielkraut had made on French radio regarding Route 181, a film made in 2003 by Sivan and Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi. At heart, the suit turned around a question of intertextuality, namely the relation between Route 181, which addresses the Palestinian Naqba, and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, and by extension, around the problematic of reading the Holocaust and the Naqba in relation to one another. © documenta12
Links:
documenta 12 magazine projects The Barber Trial: Sivan vs. Finkielkraut,
8 September, 1 pm to 4 pm, Kabinett 1
Cabinet magazine: Issue 26 Magic Summer 2007
The Barber Trial: Sivan vs. Finkielkraut, Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman