Who owns the trauma blanket? Tracing Kader Attia's ghost and the "couverture de survie" in transit

Abstract

In 2016 French-Algerian artist Kader Attia filed a lawsuit against the French rappers Dosseh and Nekfeu, accusing them of plagiarizing Attia's 2007 installation piece Ghost in their music video "Putain d'epoque." Looking closely at both artists' work, I ask: what is at stake in Attia's claims of plagiarism, especially for an artist who traffics in bricolage, memory, and, in his own words, "les blessures" of history? I argue that, with the current refugee crisis in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, the trauma blanket (couverture de survie) is an object that travelsand appears, without plagiarism or copyrightin both real life and artistic productions depicting Mediterranean crossings.