Forensis

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Forensis

Preface Forensis demonstrates how objects can be made to speak—in order to provide clarification, for example in cases of war crimes or human rights trials. The project is of the greatest significance for the work of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, playing an important role in its reconception as the site of new forms of knowledge production: beyond the judicial context, it succeeds in showing what it means to produce knowledge within and for the social space with the aid of aesthetic, scientific, and technological strategies. The forum—which the term “forensis” refers to—will be the site where objects acquire a voice and the perspectives of social actors will be articulated. It will become a site where both the order of the world and an understanding of society are negotiated. The HKW sees itself as such a forum. I would like to express my warm thanks to the team of the Forensic Architecture project at Goldsmiths for the congenial cooperation, and Anselm Franke for managing the project on behalf of the HKW. Bernd M. Scherer, Director

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Content

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Theme: OSTEOBIOGRAPHIES

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FILE Mengele’s Skull 12 CASE Living Death Camps13 FILE Mathemes 14 Theme: FORENSIC ARCHITECTURE

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case A Common Assembly  18 FILE Aesthetic Targeting 20 CASE Video-to-Space Analysis21

FILE Fingerprints FILE Kivalina CASE Gaza Flotilla FILE State Incriminating Archives FILE Forensic Listening Theme: Predictive forensics

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FILE Risk / Beirut FILE Financial   Forensics 

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Theme: THRESHOLD of DETECTABILITY

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CASE Drone Strikes

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CASE Amazonia

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Anthropocene Observatory: #3 Down to Earth 

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Contributors credits

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FILE FILE FILE FILE

Theme: BEFORE & AFTER  Theme: FORUMS

ICTY 33 Transmissional Justice34 Disputed Sunset 35 Material Witness 36



Theme: FIGURE / GROUND 

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CASE Guatemala 39 CASE Arsenic 40 CASE Geoforensics / Atacama41 FILE Climate Crimes 42

Theme: DRIFT

CASE “Left-to -die boat”  6

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Editorial Forensis is Latin for “pertaining to the forum” and is the root of the term forensics. The Roman forum was a multidimensional space of negotiation and truth-finding in which humans and objects participated together in politics, law, and the economy. With the advent of modernity, the meaning of forensics shifted to refer increasingly to the domain of law, and particularly to the use of medicine—and later science more generally—in the courts. Today, forensics is central to the ways by which states police and govern their subjects, and, through its popular representations, has become a defining feature of contemporary culture. By returning to the wider concept of forensis, this exhibition seeks to unlock the potential of forensics as a political practice. Inverting the direction of the forensic gaze, it seeks to designate a field of action in which individuals and independent organizations can detect, represent, and confront abuses of 8

power by states and corporations in situations that have a bearing upon political struggle, violent conflict, and climate change. This exhibition presents the work of the architects, artists, filmmakers, and theorists who make up the Forensic Architecture project at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as that of its close collaborators and guests. It includes forensic investigations that seek to provide new kinds of evidence for international prosecution teams, political organizations, NGOs, and the United Nations (these inter