On Forensic Architecture: A Conversation with Eyal Weizman (original) (raw)
Related papers
EYAL WEIZMAN. FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE: VIOLENCE AT THE THRESHOLD OF DETECTABILITY. ZONE BOOKS, 2017.
The war and political violence exercised in various territories based on the manipulation of space, as well as the images that are produced through forms of registration and documentation of said violence by various devices of visuality and control, are key topics to be debated in the contemporary scene. Forensic Architecture. Violence at the threshold of detectability (2017) introduces forensic architecture as a practice of critical agency that explores diverse methodologies to report human rights violations through evidence present in the architectural space. It is worth noticing that Forensic Architecture (FA) is the name of the research agency founded in 2010 by the publication's author, Eyal Weizman. Located in Goldsmith, University of London, FA is made up of a heterogeneous and international group of professionals of architects, designers, artists and filmmakers, experts in the legal, humanitarian and political fields. They have the spatial, technical and architectural representation knowledge in order to analyze and mediate contemporary conflicts that involve armed geopolitical conflicts. Its objective is to configure visual testimonies using various technological resources. In the first instance, they use surveillance and targeting devices to their advantage: on the one hand, aerial views (drones and satellite images) in mapping sites and contextualizing events, giving them a new use and meaning to develop alternatives and forms of intervention, on the other hand, security cameras and digital material available on the Internet. This image bank allows them to generate blocks of information from various media and architectural geographies. Secondly, they build 3D models based on field work and testimonies from victims and bystanders. These digital optical devices function as a concatenation of an event between three spatiotemporal conditions: before, during and after. Finally, they articulate videos that catalyze both the process and the results of the research 1. In consideration of the above, the book presents its research argument through, on the one hand, the development of fundamental concepts to understand the practice of forensic architecture and, on the other, the detailed analysis of the devices and images with which FA works, as well as the presentation of specific projects and cases that they have addressed. The
Forensic Architecture: An interview with Lachlan Kermode
Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts
Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths (University of London), which undertakes advanced spatial and media investigations into alleged cases of state/government violence and persecution, with and on behalf of human rights organisations, media organisations, environmental justice groups, and international prosecutors. The agency was established in 2010 by Eyal Weizman and a collection of fellow architects after realising that their academic work at the Centre for Research Architecture 1 could only go so far: "We needed to place our research in the most difficult situations, the most antagonistic of forms, and make use of it, mobilise it, on behalf of people whose suffering had been ignored" (Weizman 2018: 22).
Forensic Architecture : qu'est-ce donc ?
Une analyse de ce que représente le projet "Forensic Architecture" basé à l'Université de Londres - Goldsmith, du travail effectué en son cadre et des implications de celui-ci sur le monde dans lequel nous vivons.
Third Text Online, 2021
In 2020 the independent research organisation Forensic Architecture released their investigation into the police shooting and killing of Mark Duggan in London 2011. Immediately after the killing, the police had alleged Duggan was a high profile drug gangster, armed, and that he threw a gun as he was shot. As revolts ruptured throughout England, information related to the killing would surface to the public’s attention and put the police’s gang narrative into doubt; however, consistently over time, the UK judiciary would maintain Duggan’s killing was lawful. Forensic Architecture’s 2020 investigation examined the possibility (probability and plausibility) of the police’s explanation, or narrative, that Duggan had thrown the gun to a long distance from his body. While Forensic Architecture’s investigation confirmed it could not be definitively proved Duggan had thrown the gun, due to its own terms and conditions, it did not interrogate how the inquest system mediated the legal justification for Duggan’s killing. This paper will explicate the cognito-aesthetic and techno-epistemological production of the investigation’s truth-telling. My main argument is that in their dichotomic division of testimony and archive, Forensic Architecture allowed for its investigation to renounce its reliance on the accounts by the police - on the premise it was reconstructing a counter-narrative. However, as I attempt to show following a deconstruction approach, the investigation im-perceptibly re-announced the testimonies of the police - re-iterated and re-produced the lies, perjury, disavows, and fictions of racial violence - through the restoration of a mode and medium of inquiry and (legal) decision-making.