CRUNCH: Documenting Colonial Toxicity

This talk discusses the possibilities and impossibilities of disobeying institutional protocols and imposed amnesia, focusing on France’s nuclear weapons testing programme in the Algerian Sahara between 1960 and 1966. During this period, the French colonial regime detonated four atmospheric atomic bombs and 13 underground nuclear bombs in the Algerian Sahara, extracting natural resources in the process. This covert programme occurred during and after the Algerian Revolution, or the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). 

Samia Henni highlights three ways these hidden histories have been documented and publicly exposed: translations of testimonies from nuclear victims, the travelling exhibition Performing Colonial Toxicity and the book Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara (2024). This nearly 600-page manuscript meticulously compiles material from available, contraband and leaked sources, offering a rich repository for those engaged with the histories of nuclear weapons and the intersections of spatial, social and environmental justice as well as anticolonial archival practices. 

This event is part of the flagship CRUNCH Series at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. 

Please note this event is first-come, first-served and is limited capacity. Doors close at 18:40. 

Speaker biographies

Samia Henni is a historian and exhibition maker focused on built, destroyed, and imagined environments. She is the author of Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria and Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara. Samia's exhibitions include Performing Colonial Toxicity, Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria, and Housing Pharmacology. Henni received her PhD in the history and theory of architecture (with distinction) from ETH Zurich and has held academic positions at Princeton University, ETH Zurich, Cornell University, and McGill University. She is currently co-chair of the University Seminar “Beyond France” at Columbia University. 

Jananne Al-Ani is an artist with solo exhibitions at venues including Towner Eastbourne, Beirut Art Center, and Tate Britain. Her work has been featured in major group exhibitions such as Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991–2011 (MoMA PS1) and the 18th Biennale of Sydney. Al-Ani’s work is held in collections such as the V&A, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, and Centre Pompidou. She is a trustee of The Photographers’ Gallery and Reader in Photography and Moving Image at the University of the Arts London. 

Edward Denison is an educator and an independent practitioner with over 25 years’ professional experience in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, and has twice been awarded the RIBA President’s Medal for Research. Edward is Professor of Architecture and Global Modernities at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. He has published over 20 books, produced three exhibitions, and his written and photographic work features regularly in print and online media internationally. In 2020, he cofounded the global collaborative, MoHoA (Modern Heritage of Africa / Modern Heritage in the Anthropocene). His research is motivated by historical inequity and its future effects. 

More information

Image: Spread from Samia Henni’s Colonial Toxicity: Rehearsing French Radioactive Architecture and Landscape in the Sahara (Amsterdam: If I Can’t Dance and Framer Framed, Zurich: edition fink, 2024)