Forensic Architecture – an interview with its founder

JVL Introduction

Forensic Architecture founder Eyal Weizman in conversation with Ash Sarkar of Novara Media was premiered on 21 Apr 2024 on Downstream. It makes fascinating, often gripping, listening.

It is a wide-ranging discussion of what has emerged as a completely new interdisciplinary investigative medium, using satellite imagery and video evidence in particular to throw light on corporate and state violence, both historical and contemporary.

Forensic Architecture was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2018.

We reported previously on the attempt to censor its exhibition, Cloud Studies, at the Whitworth Gallery during the Manchester International Festival in 2021, here, and its victory here.

Forsensic Architecture’s investigations have ranged widely, from the killing of Mark Duggan in 2011 through such topics as German colonial genocide in Namibia, humanitarian violence in Gaza,  Israel’s visual material presented to the ICJ, The extrajudicial killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Grenfell Tower fire, the murder of June Knightly, the Pylos shipwrick, the Beirut port explosion, the IOF’s raid on Al Haq’s offices in August 2022, and hundreds of other incidents besides.

RK

Exposing Government Cover-Ups With Forensic Architecture | Eyal Weizman talks to Ash Sarkar

Novara Media’s Introduction

It’s not what you know; it’s what you can prove. For years, Forensic Architecture has exposed state crimes against civilians, nature, and humanity. This week on Downstream, Ash Sarkar meets FA’s director Eyal Weizman, to discuss Israel’s settler colonial project, the police killing of Mark Duggan, and how the testimony of blindfolded torture victims helped construct a model of Bashar al-Assad’s most notorious torture prison

Timeline of the video:

00:00 Intro
01:31 Beginnings in Palestine
06:28 The Importance of Maps
10:26 Eyal’s Beginnings and Assembling the Team
22:11 Exposing Government Lies
30:42 Assad’s Torture Prisons and Reconstructing Memories
52:35 How Different Senses Affect Memory
56:35 Forensic Architecture and Gaza