It was an honor to be selected for a Fellowship at The New School’s Institute for Critical and Social Inquiry (ICSI) Summer Seminar FORENSIS with Eyal Weizman. Professor Weizman is Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures and founding director of the Center for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Participating in this intensive with so many insightful researchers engaged in important work was exceptional. More information on the program Fellows is available here, the ICSI here.

About FORENSIS

In recent years, a research group named Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into cases of state violence, neo-colonialism and racist repression that were denied or covered up. Today, the group works with social movements, provides crucial evidence for truth commissions, international courts, claims for historical reparation, and works with a wide range of communities, activist groups and NGOs. Their work — equally presented in courts, media and as exhibitions in cultural venues — seek to challenge the institutions in which it is shown. Their practice calls for a transformative politics in which architecture as a field of knowledge and a mode of interpretation confronts ever-new forms of state violence and secrecy in the physical or digital domains. Beyond shedding new light on state crimes, Forensic Architecture also created a new form of investigative practice that bears its name. The group has developed a wide variety of evidentiary techniques, such as situated testimony, synthetic classifiers for machine learning open source investigation, and immersive reality investigation. In this seminar, Eyal Weizman, the group’s founder, will provide an in-depth introduction to the practical and theoretical questions arising from the work of Forensic Architecture, and the way they intersect with political, media and material theory as well as the notion of Investigative aesthetics. The seminar and lecture will provide detailed documentation that records the intricate work the group has performed.