Periodic Reporting for period 4 - FAMEC (Forensic Architecture: The Media Environments of Conflict)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-05-01 al 2022-04-30
FAMEC posited architecture – particularly the emergent academic field of ‘forensic architecture’ – as precisely that medium and mode of analysis, a tool through which to connect the eruptive violence of single incidents with the slow violence of social and political conditions, and to present information, evidence, findings, and arguments in a convincing and accessible manner, across multiple forums, in pursuit of accountability for human rights violations and war crimes. Such a practice, a contemporary response to contemporary conditions, is of fundamental social importance: for any accountability structures or civil society networks to respond appropriately to war crimes, human rights violations, or deaths in custody, they must be informed of those violations, and persuaded of the veracity of reporting about them, in the modalities and language of a new information era. FAMEC has developed techniques to collect and compile image data, then locate, compose, and cross-reference them within a digital 3D reconstruction of the architectural environment in which the incident unfolded.
By engaging with ongoing human rights and environmental concerns through more than 60 published investigations and over 200 exhibitions, FAMEC has developed and disseminated core methodologies for investigative visual and spatial analysis, including the use of digital models, ‘game engine’ software, and custom-built interactive mapping software, for the organisation, verification, presentation and analysis of image and video data, as well as theoretical contributions to contemporary human rights work, particularly the development of the concept of ‘open verification’. Alongside our published videos and exhibitions, we have provided expert forensic reports for casework, organised and contributed to symposia and workshops around the world, published monographs and articles. Major exhibitions have been accompanied by seminars and public programmes. FA’s website is an extensive resource of investigative materials, testifying to the development of the FAMEC project, and an archive of our exhibitions and publications. Beginning within the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, we have supported the development of MA courses in forensic architecture at Goldsmiths, and at institutions around the world, while many of our casework-led engagements with activist networks have been exercises in multi-directional skill-sharing, in which the techniques and theoretical positions of FA meet the situated knowledge and experience of communities on the frontline of human rights struggles.
A full selection of our casework is best viewed on our website: www.forensic-architecture.org
As the field continues to take up techniques pioneered by FA with a pace and enthusiasm that exceeded our expectations, the FAMEC project has expanded beyond the methodological horizons envisaged in the original application. Across its duration, the FAMEC project has successfully prototyped AI-based object detection tools, pushed the capacities of digital modelling techniques and environmental remote sensing techniques, including the deployment of game engine software, introduced computer fluid dynamics simulations into human rights casework, pioneered the development of ‘open source archaeology’, and developed bespoke and robust cartographic mapping and data-aggregation software, which has been cited by UN agencies and submitted to international courtrooms. At the same time, we have developed innovative methods of interviewing survivors’ of trauma through collaborative reconstruction of scenes within digital environments – one of a number of ways integrating innovative technical research with a sensitivity to the ‘situated knowledge’ of survivors and victims of violence – and explored the possibilities of physical reconstruction of incidents of rights violations, including ‘audio experiments’, re-enactments, and use of ‘motion capture’ to bridge between physical and digital experimentation.
We have been widely recognised for our ground-breaking contributions to journalism, design, art, and culture, including nominations and awards by Ars Electronica, Peabody, Emmy, the Design Museum’s Design of the Year, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez Journalism Award, the European Cultural Foundation, and more. In 2018 FA was nominated for the Turner Prize, perhaps the contemporary art world’s most prestigious award.