Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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An organisation that uses architectural evidence in cases of war crimes or other human rights abuses is making itself enemies in high places
āA hybrid of physical and virtual spaceā: a reconstruction by Forensic Architecture of the bombing of Rafah, Gaza, 1 August 2014. Photograph: Forensic Architecture
In 2006 a man walked into an internet cafe in Kassel, Germany, and shot dead Halit Yozgat, a 21-year-old member of the Turkish-German family who owned it. It was the ninth in a series of racist killings by neo-Nazis, the motivation for which the police persistently refused to admit. A striking fact of Yozgatās murder was that Andreas Temme, an intelligence agent for the state of Hessen, was in the cafe at the time, logged on to a dating website in a back room. If thereās one thing a secret agent should be able to do, you might have thought, it would be to notice a killing in the next room, but Temme claimed he did not.
He took part in a police video reconstruction in which he is seen placing his payment for his internet access on the reception table, unaware of the corpse on the floor behind it. His story didnāt seem likely, but in the absence of further evidence it seemed that he would have to be taken at his word. That might have been that, were it not that Forensic Architecture investigated the case and exhibited their findings at the 2017 edition of Documenta, Kasselās five-yearly art fair. Through creating a full-scale mock-up of the cafe interior, and analysing the sound of the two shots (loud enough, even with a silencer), the dispersal of their smoke and the sightlines of the agent ā a tall man ā as he put money on the table behind which the young victim was sprawled, it was demonstrated that Temme could not possibly have failed to hear, smell and see the crime.
Forensic Architecture, whose work is going on show next month at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, is an agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. The organisationās founder and director is Eyal Weizman, a British-Israeli architect. Its primary mission is research, to ādevelop evidentiary systems in relation to specific casesā; in so doing, it acts as āan architectural detective agencyā, working with NGOs and human rights lawyers to uncover facts that confound the stories told by police, military, states and corporations. āWe think that architects need to be public figures,ā says Weizman. āThey should take positions, whatever they do. We map the most extreme and violent forms.ā
Forensic Architecture: the detail behind the devilry
This is awesome. It's lengthy but it's good.
āA hybrid of physical and virtual spaceā: a reconstruction by Forensic Architecture of the bombing of Rafah, Gaza, 1 August 2014. Photograph: Forensic Architecture
In 2006 a man walked into an internet cafe in Kassel, Germany, and shot dead Halit Yozgat, a 21-year-old member of the Turkish-German family who owned it. It was the ninth in a series of racist killings by neo-Nazis, the motivation for which the police persistently refused to admit. A striking fact of Yozgatās murder was that Andreas Temme, an intelligence agent for the state of Hessen, was in the cafe at the time, logged on to a dating website in a back room. If thereās one thing a secret agent should be able to do, you might have thought, it would be to notice a killing in the next room, but Temme claimed he did not.
He took part in a police video reconstruction in which he is seen placing his payment for his internet access on the reception table, unaware of the corpse on the floor behind it. His story didnāt seem likely, but in the absence of further evidence it seemed that he would have to be taken at his word. That might have been that, were it not that Forensic Architecture investigated the case and exhibited their findings at the 2017 edition of Documenta, Kasselās five-yearly art fair. Through creating a full-scale mock-up of the cafe interior, and analysing the sound of the two shots (loud enough, even with a silencer), the dispersal of their smoke and the sightlines of the agent ā a tall man ā as he put money on the table behind which the young victim was sprawled, it was demonstrated that Temme could not possibly have failed to hear, smell and see the crime.
Forensic Architecture, whose work is going on show next month at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, is an agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. The organisationās founder and director is Eyal Weizman, a British-Israeli architect. Its primary mission is research, to ādevelop evidentiary systems in relation to specific casesā; in so doing, it acts as āan architectural detective agencyā, working with NGOs and human rights lawyers to uncover facts that confound the stories told by police, military, states and corporations. āWe think that architects need to be public figures,ā says Weizman. āThey should take positions, whatever they do. We map the most extreme and violent forms.ā
Forensic Architecture: the detail behind the devilry
This is awesome. It's lengthy but it's good.
