Forensic Architecture works at the intersection of investigation, architecture, visual culture and human rights. Based at Goldsmiths, University of London, the research agency reconstructs events through spatial analysis, video, photographs, satellite imagery, testimony and open-source material. Its investigations examine violence by states and other powerful actors, as well as environmental destruction.
Its presence in museums raises a question that goes beyond the presentation of evidence. What changes when material assembled to establish what happened is also encountered as contemporary art? An exhibition can make an investigation visible to people who would never read a legal report. It can also shift attention toward the images and away from the people and events they document.
On The Art Trace, this tag gathers articles about Forensic Architecture’s investigations and exhibitions, with particular attention to that tension between evidence and display. I am interested in what the work allows us to see, how it asks us to judge what we see, and whether visibility leads to any consequence beyond the exhibition itself.
Forensic Architecture In 2021, the ICA exhibited a reconstruction of the police killing of Mark Duggan. The request to reopen the case had already been refused. What remained for the exhibition to do?
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