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“The Origin of Painting” by Disinformation - Wrexham Arts Centre, October to December 2006

Brochure text - An exhibition by electronic music and audiovisual art project Disinformation, which takes its title from a live and highly interactive sound and light installation that references the Greek myth of “The Corinthian Maid, or The Origin of Painting”. The installation enables visitors to photograph their own shadows, and to paint with light, directly onto the surface of the exhibit, to a soundtrack of live electromagnetic noise. Also includes the pieces “Blackout” by Barry Hale, “The Analysis of Beauty”, “Spellbound” and the first public exhibition of test images for the new Disinformation project “Fire in the Eye”.

With some minor variations in the content, versions of the same Disinformation solo exhibition toured to 9 UK regional art galleries - Fabrica Gallery (Brighton, Nov 2001), Huddersfield Art Gallery (Jan 2003), Ashcroft Arts Centre (Fareham, Sept 2003), Quay Arts (Isle of Wight, Feb 2004), South Hill Park (Bracknell, April 2004), Derby Quad (June 2004), Midlands Arts Centre (Birmingham, July 2005), Wrexham Arts Centre (Oct 2006) and Saltburn Artists Projects (January 2007). Four of these exhibitions were funded with a special grant from the Arts Council’s then National Touring Programme.

Special thanks - for helping organise and fund the Disinformation touring exhibitions - to Jonathan Swain, Liz Whitehead, Matthew Miller [RIP], Robert Hall, Nicola Stephenson, Bronac Ferran, Tony White, Richard Humphreys, Genevieve Wilk, Carol Palmer, Rob Thrush, James Lucas, Fiona Burn, Jo Johnson, Eluned Myher, Louise Fedotov-Clements, Alex Boyd, Tracy Simpson and Lauren Healey.

In more detail -

“The Origin of Painting” [pictured] is an electromagnetic sound and optokinetic light installation, which originally premiered under the title “Artificial Lightning” in the “Sonic Boom” exhibition at London’s Hayward Gallery, April 2000, curated by David Toop and Fiona Bradley. The “Blackout” (Sound Mirrors) video [pictured] was filmed in 1997 by Barry Hale, and featured as a projected back-drop in numerous Disinformation concerts, talks and DJ sets, etc, before forming the centrepiece of the Disinformation “Blackout” exhibition, which toured to the Broadway Media Centre (Nottingham, Oct 1999), Waygood Gallery (Newcastle, Nov 1999) and ICA New Media Centre (London, March 2000). “The Analysis of Beauty” is an optokinetic oscilloscope artwork, which premiered in the “Noise” exhibition at Kettle’s Yard gallery (Cambridge, Jan 2000) curated by Adam Lowe and Simon Schaffer. The “Spellbound” video installation is “An Allegorical Portrait of J. Robert Oppenheimer”, which was exhibited in proposal form only (as a paper document) in the Raphael Cartoon Room at The V&A (London, 3 Nov 2000), and at the Royal Society of Sculptors (London, March 2001), before the “Spellbound” video was commissioned by Fabrica gallery (Brighton) for the first “proper” Disinformation solo exhibition in November 2001 (see below). The “Fire in the Eye” photographs [pictured] (aka “Painting with Electricity”) were created in 2004, premiering at the Wrexham Arts Centre in 2006. The 35mm cinema version of “Fire in the Eye” was commissioned in 2007, premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2008, in a screening programme curated by the film scholar Kim Knowles.

Fabrica (2001) - www.flickr.com/disinfo/7099389881/

Saltburn (2007) - www.flickr.com/disinfo/2402253500/

Saltburn (2007) - www.flickr.com/disinfo/2402317598/

The “Blackout” video is based on Sound Mirror imagery that features in the “Antiphony” 2xCD packaging, published by the record company Ash International in 1997, featuring photographs by Julian Hills, and in the “Antiphony Architectural Supplement”, featured in Sound Projector magazine, issue 6, published in 1999.

Antiphony (1997) - www.flickr.com/disinfo/6896902030/

“Tarddiad Peintio” gan Disinformation - Canolfan Gelf Wrecsam, Hydref i Rhagfyr 2006

Brochure text - Arddangosfa gan y prosiect cerddoriaeth electronig a chelf glyweled, Disinformation, sy’n cael ei theitl gan osodiad sain a golau byw a rhyngweithiol sy’n cyfeirio at chwedl Roegaidd “Y Forwyn Gorinthaidd” neu “Tarddiad Peintio” (a ddarluniwyd gan yr arlunydd Joseph Wright yn 1785). Mae’r gosodiad yn galluogi ymwelwyr i dynnu lluniau o’u cysgodion eu hunain a pheintio â golau’n uniongyrchol ar yr arddangosiad i gyfeiliant sŵn electromagnetig byw. Mae hefyd yn cynnwys y darnau “Llwyrddüwch” gan Barry Hale, “Dadansoddiad Harddwch”, ”Dan Gyfaredd” ac arddangosfa gyhoeddus gyntaf y delweddau prawf ar gyfer prosiect newydd Disinformation, “Tân yn y Llygad”.

With some minor variations in the content, versions of the same Disinformation solo exhibition toured to 9 UK regional art galleries - Fabrica Gallery (Brighton, Nov 2001), Huddersfield Art Gallery (Jan 2003), Ashcroft Arts Centre (Fareham, Sept 2003), Quay Arts (Isle of Wight, Feb 2004), South Hill Park (Bracknell, April 2004), Derby Quad (June 2004), Midlands Arts Centre (Birmingham, July 2005), Wrexham Arts Centre (Oct 2006) and Saltburn Artists Projects (January 2007). Four of these exhibitions were funded with a special grant from the Arts Council’s then National Touring Programme.

Special thanks - for helping organise and fund the Disinformation touring exhibitions - to Jonathan Swain, Liz Whitehead, Matthew Miller [RIP], Robert Hall, Nicola Stephenson, Bronac Ferran, Tony White, Richard Humphreys, Genevieve Wilk, Carol Palmer, Rob Thrush, James Lucas, Fiona Burn, Jo Johnson, Eluned Myher, Louise Fedotov-Clements, Alex Boyd, Tracy Simpson and Lauren Healey.

More information - www.flickr.com/disinfo/53672037785/

Enjoying the downtown Boston skyline (and dramatic clouds) from the Lewis Mall ferry slip in East Boston after a great day at Piers Park and the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts) Watershed museum.

Friday 5 July to Sun 28 July 2019
11am to 6pm Fridays to Sundays
Closed Mondays to Thursdays

White Box Gallery
5 Hare & Billet Road
Blackheath
London SE3 0RB

In his essay “Meanings of Landscape” (“Places of the Mind”, RKP 1949) the critic and curator Geoffrey Grigson described how “some people have ignored the personal factor” in writing on landscape art, and have attempted “to deduce from landscape rules of its own aesthetic”, describing the influence on art (and on art writing) of “a romantic pastime of English travellers in the eighteenth century” who sought to postulate “a kind of psychology divorced from the individual soul”. Particularly in response to the work of the painter John Constable, “Places of the Mind” proposed the alternate hypotheses that “landscape is you and me”, discussing how “we project ourselves” into an actual or painted landscape, “which then reflects our own being back to our eyes”...

rorschachaudio.com/2019/04/22/international-lawns-rca-dis...

By Paula Rego

The white figure with black outlines, towards the centre, is a representation of the artist's father. Ominous forces surround and overwhelm him. Rego's father died the year after this collage was made, his Republican ideals unfulfilled. Manifesto (For a Lost Cause) was reproduced on the catalogue cover for Rego's first solo exhibition at the National Society of Fine Arts in Lisbon in 1965. Visitors were shocked by the exhibition's imagery and by Rego's use of collage and bold colour.
The work was also shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London the same year.
[Tate Britain]

Paula Rego
(July – October 2021)

The UK's largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Paula Rego’s work to date.
Since the 1950s, Paula Rego has played a key role in redefining figurative art in the UK and internationally. An uncompromising artist of extraordinary imaginative power, she has revolutionised the way in which women are represented.
This exhibition tells the story of this artist’s extraordinary life, highlighting the personal nature of much of her work and the socio-political context in which it is rooted. It also reveals the artist’s broad range of references, from comic strips to history painting.
It features over 100 works, including collage, paintings, large-scale pastels, ink and pencil drawings and etchings. These include early works from the 1950s in which Rego first explored personal as well as social struggle, her large pastels of single figures from the acclaimed Dog Women and Abortion series and her richly layered, staged scenes from the 2000-10s.
This is a unique opportunity to survey, in the city that Rego has lived in and called home for most of her life, the full range of her work.
[Tate Britain]

Taken in Tate Britain

By Paula Rego

The white figure with black outlines, towards the centre, is a representation of the artist's father. Ominous forces surround and overwhelm him. Rego's father died the year after this collage was made, his Republican ideals unfulfilled. Manifesto (For a Lost Cause) was reproduced on the catalogue cover for Rego's first solo exhibition at the National Society of Fine Arts in Lisbon in 1965. Visitors were shocked by the exhibition's imagery and by Rego's use of collage and bold colour.
The work was also shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London the same year.
[Tate Britain]

Paula Rego
(July – October 2021)

The UK's largest and most comprehensive retrospective of Paula Rego’s work to date.
Since the 1950s, Paula Rego has played a key role in redefining figurative art in the UK and internationally. An uncompromising artist of extraordinary imaginative power, she has revolutionised the way in which women are represented.
This exhibition tells the story of this artist’s extraordinary life, highlighting the personal nature of much of her work and the socio-political context in which it is rooted. It also reveals the artist’s broad range of references, from comic strips to history painting.
It features over 100 works, including collage, paintings, large-scale pastels, ink and pencil drawings and etchings. These include early works from the 1950s in which Rego first explored personal as well as social struggle, her large pastels of single figures from the acclaimed Dog Women and Abortion series and her richly layered, staged scenes from the 2000-10s.
This is a unique opportunity to survey, in the city that Rego has lived in and called home for most of her life, the full range of her work.
[Tate Britain]

Taken in Tate Britain

Friday 5 July to Sun 28 July 2019
11am to 6pm Fridays to Sundays
Closed Mondays to Thursdays

White Box Gallery
5 Hare & Billet Road
Blackheath
London SE3 0RB

In his essay “Meanings of Landscape” (“Places of the Mind”, RKP 1949) the critic and curator Geoffrey Grigson described how “some people have ignored the personal factor” in writing on landscape art, and have attempted “to deduce from landscape rules of its own aesthetic”, describing the influence on art (and on art writing) of “a romantic pastime of English travellers in the eighteenth century” who sought to postulate “a kind of psychology divorced from the individual soul”. Particularly in response to the work of the painter John Constable, “Places of the Mind” proposed the alternate hypotheses that “landscape is you and me”, discussing how “we project ourselves” into an actual or painted landscape, “which then reflects our own being back to our eyes”.

rorschachaudio.com/2019/04/22/international-lawns-rca-dis...

Friday 5 July to Sun 28 July 2019
11am to 6pm Fridays to Sundays
Closed Mondays to Thursdays

White Box Gallery
5 Hare & Billet Road
Blackheath
London SE3 0RB

In his essay “Meanings of Landscape” (“Places of the Mind”, RKP 1949) the critic and curator Geoffrey Grigson described how “some people have ignored the personal factor” in writing on landscape art, and have attempted “to deduce from landscape rules of its own aesthetic”, describing the influence on art (and on art writing) of “a romantic pastime of English travellers in the eighteenth century” who sought to postulate “a kind of psychology divorced from the individual soul”. Particularly in response to the work of the painter John Constable, “Places of the Mind” proposed the alternate hypotheses that “landscape is you and me”, discussing how “we project ourselves” into an actual or painted landscape, “which then reflects our own being back to our eyes”.

rorschachaudio.com/2019/04/22/international-lawns-rca-dis...

From the Murder of Halit Yozgat
Kassel, Germany, 6 April 2006

On 6 April 2006, 21-year-old Halit Yozgat was murdered in his family run internet café in Kassel, Germany. His was the ninth of ten racist murders committed in Germany between 2000 and 2007 by a neo-Nazi group known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU). At the time of the killing Andreas Temme, an agent of the German domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz), was present in the café. Temme claimed not to have witnessed the murder.
Within the 77 square metres of the internet café, and the 9 minutes 26 seconds during which the incident unfolded, different actors – members of migrant communities, a state employee and the murderers – were positioned in relation to each other in a manner yet to be made clear, but one whose implications bear great political significance. This unit of space and time stands as a microcosm of the social and political controversy known as the ‘NSU Complex’.
Commissioned by Unraveling the NSU Complex, a Germany-wide alliance of anti-racism activists, Forensic Architecture’s investigation became possible when hundreds of documents from the Hessen police investigation of the murder – reports, witness depositions, photographs, and computer and phone logs – were leaked at the end of 2015.
One of the most important pieces of evidence in this leak was a video of a police re-enactment performed by Andreas Temme. Such re-enactments are often ritualistic events forming part of an admission or confession, denoting justice fulfilled. In Forensic Architecture’s investigation the re-enactment is treated not only as a representation of an event, but an event in itself; a potential crime – of perjury and misrepresentation – in its own right.
Within a reconstructed real-scale physical model of the internet café – the exact dimensions of which are marked here on a black carpet – Forensic Architecture re-enacted this re-enactment in order to examine Temme’s testimony, while also carrying out further tests to analyse the threshold of sensory perception. A video presented here shows moments from this process of re-enactment.
The video triptych 77sqm_9:26min presents Forensic Architecture’s full analysis of the events surrounding Halit Yozgat’s murder. This investigation established that Temme’s testimony was untruthful, opening up to larger questions regarding the involvement of German state agencies with radical right-wing groups. As the NSU trial approaches its conclusion in 2018, the truth of the murder – and above all, Temme’s presence at the scene – remains obscured.
The mural presented here charts the events related to the production, presentation and subsequent contestation of Forensic Architecture’s analysis across multiple forums: press conferences, cultural institutions, public demonstrations, two parliamentary inquiries and a criminal court. In each of these forums, Forensic Architecture was obliged to defend its evidence according to different rules and conventions. The complexity of this flow diagram traces the indeterminate nature of counter forensics, its methods, limitations and points of impact.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Part of Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture (March-May 2018).

Forensic Architecture is both the name of the agency established in 2010, and a form of investigative practice into state violence and human rights violations that traverses architectural, journalistic and legal fields, and shifts between critical reflections and tactical interventions.
Counter Investigations presents a selection of recent investigations undertaken by the agency into incidents occurring in different contexts worldwide. In parallel, the exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical and technological questions. Continuing to be explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, these investigations and propositions add up to a Short Course in Forensic Architecture.
Grounded in the use of architecture as an analytic device, Forensic Architecture has in recent years developed a host of new evidentiary methods that respond to our changing media landscape – exemplified in the widespread availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging and platforms for data sharing – and propose new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and activism.
Forensic Architecture has worked closely with communities affected by acts of social and political violence, alongside NGOs, human rights groups, activists, and media organisations. Their investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, and contested accounts given by state authorities, leading to military, parliamentary and UN inquiries.
Counter Investigations marks the beginning of a long term collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Forensic Architecture. The exhibition and this ongoing partnership exemplifies the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ intent to foster and explore new modes of civil practice operating across the fields of art, architecture and activism.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Iguala, Mexico, 26–27 September 2014
(Investigation 2016 – 2017)

On the night of the 26–27 September 2014, a group of students and activists from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa were attacked in the town of Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. The students had commandeered buses to take them to a political protest in Mexico City. The attacks were committed by local police in collusion with criminal organisations and other branches of the Mexican security apparatus, including state and federal police and the military. Six people were murdered, 40 wounded, and 43 students were forcibly disappeared.
Forensic Architecture’s investigation data-mined thousands of reported incidents, videos, and phone-logs from reports composed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and plotted this data within an interactive platform. This online cartographic platform helps users and investigators explore the relationship between thousands of events – shootings, car movements and two way communications – and hundreds of actors belonging to the different organisations involved. The data reveals instances of collusion and coordination between state organisations and organised crime, and identifies contradictions in layers of testimony and reports.
A large-scale mural, titled The Forking Paths of Ayotzinapa, plots the narrative timeline of different actors in the atrocity – victims, state security agents and members of criminal organisations – as well as that of the federal investigators. The diagram shows the simplified narrative of the incident presented by the Mexican Federal Attorney General, contrasting with the divergent and far more complex narratives derived from the testimonies of the surviving students and the IACHR reports.
The mural therefore presents enforced disappearance as a narrative form. Such actions are revealed to be not only acts of violence against people, but also against information. Enforced disappearance includes the physical destruction of bodies as well as the destruction of evidence and the introduction of false narratives. These practices made it possible for the whereabouts of the 43 Ayotzinapa students to remain a mystery to the present day.
The parents of the victims have used Forensic Architecture’s investigation to challenge the state’s version of events. The trial is at its first stage, but one of the Mexican Supreme Court justices has stated publicly that Forensic Architecture’s work is an opportunity to ‘reconsider state violence’, signaling that the state judiciary is examining this evidence.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Part of Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture (March-May 2018).

Forensic Architecture is both the name of the agency established in 2010, and a form of investigative practice into state violence and human rights violations that traverses architectural, journalistic and legal fields, and shifts between critical reflections and tactical interventions.
Counter Investigations presents a selection of recent investigations undertaken by the agency into incidents occurring in different contexts worldwide. In parallel, the exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical and technological questions. Continuing to be explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, these investigations and propositions add up to a Short Course in Forensic Architecture.
Grounded in the use of architecture as an analytic device, Forensic Architecture has in recent years developed a host of new evidentiary methods that respond to our changing media landscape – exemplified in the widespread availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging and platforms for data sharing – and propose new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and activism.
Forensic Architecture has worked closely with communities affected by acts of social and political violence, alongside NGOs, human rights groups, activists, and media organisations. Their investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, and contested accounts given by state authorities, leading to military, parliamentary and UN inquiries.
Counter Investigations marks the beginning of a long term collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Forensic Architecture. The exhibition and this ongoing partnership exemplifies the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ intent to foster and explore new modes of civil practice operating across the fields of art, architecture and activism.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Gaza, Palestine, 1 August 2014
(Investigation 2014 – 2015)

Friday 1 August was the deadliest and most destructive day in the 2014 Gaza war, following Israel’s enactment of the Hannibal Directive, a classified military order that is understood to permit Israeli soldiers, in the event of a fellow soldier’s capture by enemy forces, to target the captive so as to foreclose the possibility of a prisoner exchange. The bombardment of Rafah on 1 August was aimed at destroying the tunnels under the city into which an Israeli soldier was taken by Hamas fighters.
Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture were denied entry into the Gaza strip, therefore their investigation had to rely on thousands of images and videos posted online by the people of Rafah and by journalists, or sent directly to Forensic Architecture. Because the temporal and spatial metadata on images found on social media websites is not available, Forensic Architecture had to reconstruct this information by studying visual traces such as shadows and the shape of bomb clouds, to locate each image in time and space, and to compose a narrative of the day.
One of the videos examined included two still frames that captured bombs mid-fall, fractions of a second before impact. By locating the images within the 3D model, Forensic Architecture was able to identify the bombs as US-manufactured MK-84 / GBU-31 JDAMs, carrying one ton of explosives. Dropped in an inhabited civilian area, Amnesty International’s subsequent report has identified this use of the munition as a war crime.
A detailed schematic, presented here, based on a satellite photograph of Eastern Rafah taken on 1 August 2014 at 11.39am, shows Forensic Architecture’s working drawing developed during this investigation. It includes annotations of all forms of evidence it found and verified.
In May 2016 Israel canceled the Hannibal Directive, after legal experts cited its application on 1 August 2014 as the prime example of the command’s incompatibility with international law.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Part of Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture (March-May 2018).

Forensic Architecture is both the name of the agency established in 2010, and a form of investigative practice into state violence and human rights violations that traverses architectural, journalistic and legal fields, and shifts between critical reflections and tactical interventions.
Counter Investigations presents a selection of recent investigations undertaken by the agency into incidents occurring in different contexts worldwide. In parallel, the exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical and technological questions. Continuing to be explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, these investigations and propositions add up to a Short Course in Forensic Architecture.
Grounded in the use of architecture as an analytic device, Forensic Architecture has in recent years developed a host of new evidentiary methods that respond to our changing media landscape – exemplified in the widespread availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging and platforms for data sharing – and propose new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and activism.
Forensic Architecture has worked closely with communities affected by acts of social and political violence, alongside NGOs, human rights groups, activists, and media organisations. Their investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, and contested accounts given by state authorities, leading to military, parliamentary and UN inquiries.
Counter Investigations marks the beginning of a long term collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Forensic Architecture. The exhibition and this ongoing partnership exemplifies the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ intent to foster and explore new modes of civil practice operating across the fields of art, architecture and activism.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Forensic Oceanography is a project initiated within the framework of Forensic Architecture by Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani, in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011. It seeks to critically investigate the militarised border regime imposed by Europe across the Mediterranean Sea, analysing the political, spatial and aesthetic conditions that have led to the death of large numbers of migrants in the region over the last 30 years.
By combining human testimonies with traces left across the digital sensorium of the sea constituted by radars, satellite imagery and vessel tracking systems, Forensic Oceanography has mobilised surveillance means ‘against the grain’ to contest both the violence of borders and the regime of (in)visibility on which it is founded. While the seas have been carved up into a complex jurisdictional space that allows states to extend their sovereign claims through police operations beyond the limits of their territory, but also to retract themselves from obligations, such as rescuing vessels in distress, Forensic Oceanography has sought to locate particular incidents within the legal architecture of the EU’s maritime frontier, so as to determine responsibility for them.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Part of Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture (March-May 2018).

Forensic Architecture is both the name of the agency established in 2010, and a form of investigative practice into state violence and human rights violations that traverses architectural, journalistic and legal fields, and shifts between critical reflections and tactical interventions.
Counter Investigations presents a selection of recent investigations undertaken by the agency into incidents occurring in different contexts worldwide. In parallel, the exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical and technological questions. Continuing to be explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, these investigations and propositions add up to a Short Course in Forensic Architecture.
Grounded in the use of architecture as an analytic device, Forensic Architecture has in recent years developed a host of new evidentiary methods that respond to our changing media landscape – exemplified in the widespread availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging and platforms for data sharing – and propose new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and activism.
Forensic Architecture has worked closely with communities affected by acts of social and political violence, alongside NGOs, human rights groups, activists, and media organisations. Their investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, and contested accounts given by state authorities, leading to military, parliamentary and UN inquiries.
Counter Investigations marks the beginning of a long term collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Forensic Architecture. The exhibition and this ongoing partnership exemplifies the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ intent to foster and explore new modes of civil practice operating across the fields of art, architecture and activism.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

From the Murder of Halit Yozgat
Kassel, Germany, 6 April 2006

On 6 April 2006, 21-year-old Halit Yozgat was murdered in his family run internet café in Kassel, Germany. His was the ninth of ten racist murders committed in Germany between 2000 and 2007 by a neo-Nazi group known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU). At the time of the killing Andreas Temme, an agent of the German domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz), was present in the café. Temme claimed not to have witnessed the murder.
Within the 77 square metres of the internet café, and the 9 minutes 26 seconds during which the incident unfolded, different actors – members of migrant communities, a state employee and the murderers – were positioned in relation to each other in a manner yet to be made clear, but one whose implications bear great political significance. This unit of space and time stands as a microcosm of the social and political controversy known as the ‘NSU Complex’.
Commissioned by Unraveling the NSU Complex, a Germany-wide alliance of anti-racism activists, Forensic Architecture’s investigation became possible when hundreds of documents from the Hessen police investigation of the murder – reports, witness depositions, photographs, and computer and phone logs – were leaked at the end of 2015.
One of the most important pieces of evidence in this leak was a video of a police re-enactment performed by Andreas Temme. Such re-enactments are often ritualistic events forming part of an admission or confession, denoting justice fulfilled. In Forensic Architecture’s investigation the re-enactment is treated not only as a representation of an event, but an event in itself; a potential crime – of perjury and misrepresentation – in its own right.
Within a reconstructed real-scale physical model of the internet café – the exact dimensions of which are marked here on a black carpet – Forensic Architecture re-enacted this re-enactment in order to examine Temme’s testimony, while also carrying out further tests to analyse the threshold of sensory perception. A video presented here shows moments from this process of re-enactment.
The video triptych 77sqm_9:26min presents Forensic Architecture’s full analysis of the events surrounding Halit Yozgat’s murder. This investigation established that Temme’s testimony was untruthful, opening up to larger questions regarding the involvement of German state agencies with radical right-wing groups. As the NSU trial approaches its conclusion in 2018, the truth of the murder – and above all, Temme’s presence at the scene – remains obscured.
The mural presented here charts the events related to the production, presentation and subsequent contestation of Forensic Architecture’s analysis across multiple forums: press conferences, cultural institutions, public demonstrations, two parliamentary inquiries and a criminal court. In each of these forums, Forensic Architecture was obliged to defend its evidence according to different rules and conventions. The complexity of this flow diagram traces the indeterminate nature of counter forensics, its methods, limitations and points of impact.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Part of Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture (March-May 2018).

Forensic Architecture is both the name of the agency established in 2010, and a form of investigative practice into state violence and human rights violations that traverses architectural, journalistic and legal fields, and shifts between critical reflections and tactical interventions.
Counter Investigations presents a selection of recent investigations undertaken by the agency into incidents occurring in different contexts worldwide. In parallel, the exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical and technological questions. Continuing to be explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, these investigations and propositions add up to a Short Course in Forensic Architecture.
Grounded in the use of architecture as an analytic device, Forensic Architecture has in recent years developed a host of new evidentiary methods that respond to our changing media landscape – exemplified in the widespread availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging and platforms for data sharing – and propose new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and activism.
Forensic Architecture has worked closely with communities affected by acts of social and political violence, alongside NGOs, human rights groups, activists, and media organisations. Their investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, and contested accounts given by state authorities, leading to military, parliamentary and UN inquiries.
Counter Investigations marks the beginning of a long term collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Forensic Architecture. The exhibition and this ongoing partnership exemplifies the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ intent to foster and explore new modes of civil practice operating across the fields of art, architecture and activism.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

From the Murder of Halit Yozgat
Kassel, Germany, 6 April 2006

On 6 April 2006, 21-year-old Halit Yozgat was murdered in his family run internet café in Kassel, Germany. His was the ninth of ten racist murders committed in Germany between 2000 and 2007 by a neo-Nazi group known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU). At the time of the killing Andreas Temme, an agent of the German domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz), was present in the café. Temme claimed not to have witnessed the murder.
Within the 77 square metres of the internet café, and the 9 minutes 26 seconds during which the incident unfolded, different actors – members of migrant communities, a state employee and the murderers – were positioned in relation to each other in a manner yet to be made clear, but one whose implications bear great political significance. This unit of space and time stands as a microcosm of the social and political controversy known as the ‘NSU Complex’.
Commissioned by Unraveling the NSU Complex, a Germany-wide alliance of anti-racism activists, Forensic Architecture’s investigation became possible when hundreds of documents from the Hessen police investigation of the murder – reports, witness depositions, photographs, and computer and phone logs – were leaked at the end of 2015.
One of the most important pieces of evidence in this leak was a video of a police re-enactment performed by Andreas Temme. Such re-enactments are often ritualistic events forming part of an admission or confession, denoting justice fulfilled. In Forensic Architecture’s investigation the re-enactment is treated not only as a representation of an event, but an event in itself; a potential crime – of perjury and misrepresentation – in its own right.
Within a reconstructed real-scale physical model of the internet café – the exact dimensions of which are marked here on a black carpet – Forensic Architecture re-enacted this re-enactment in order to examine Temme’s testimony, while also carrying out further tests to analyse the threshold of sensory perception. A video presented here shows moments from this process of re-enactment.
The video triptych 77sqm_9:26min presents Forensic Architecture’s full analysis of the events surrounding Halit Yozgat’s murder. This investigation established that Temme’s testimony was untruthful, opening up to larger questions regarding the involvement of German state agencies with radical right-wing groups. As the NSU trial approaches its conclusion in 2018, the truth of the murder – and above all, Temme’s presence at the scene – remains obscured.
The mural presented here charts the events related to the production, presentation and subsequent contestation of Forensic Architecture’s analysis across multiple forums: press conferences, cultural institutions, public demonstrations, two parliamentary inquiries and a criminal court. In each of these forums, Forensic Architecture was obliged to defend its evidence according to different rules and conventions. The complexity of this flow diagram traces the indeterminate nature of counter forensics, its methods, limitations and points of impact.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Part of Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture (March-May 2018).

Forensic Architecture is both the name of the agency established in 2010, and a form of investigative practice into state violence and human rights violations that traverses architectural, journalistic and legal fields, and shifts between critical reflections and tactical interventions.
Counter Investigations presents a selection of recent investigations undertaken by the agency into incidents occurring in different contexts worldwide. In parallel, the exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical and technological questions. Continuing to be explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, these investigations and propositions add up to a Short Course in Forensic Architecture.
Grounded in the use of architecture as an analytic device, Forensic Architecture has in recent years developed a host of new evidentiary methods that respond to our changing media landscape – exemplified in the widespread availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging and platforms for data sharing – and propose new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and activism.
Forensic Architecture has worked closely with communities affected by acts of social and political violence, alongside NGOs, human rights groups, activists, and media organisations. Their investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, and contested accounts given by state authorities, leading to military, parliamentary and UN inquiries.
Counter Investigations marks the beginning of a long term collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Forensic Architecture. The exhibition and this ongoing partnership exemplifies the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ intent to foster and explore new modes of civil practice operating across the fields of art, architecture and activism.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Gaza, Palestine, 1 August 2014
(Investigation 2014 – 2015)

Friday 1 August was the deadliest and most destructive day in the 2014 Gaza war, following Israel’s enactment of the Hannibal Directive, a classified military order that is understood to permit Israeli soldiers, in the event of a fellow soldier’s capture by enemy forces, to target the captive so as to foreclose the possibility of a prisoner exchange. The bombardment of Rafah on 1 August was aimed at destroying the tunnels under the city into which an Israeli soldier was taken by Hamas fighters.
Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture were denied entry into the Gaza strip, therefore their investigation had to rely on thousands of images and videos posted online by the people of Rafah and by journalists, or sent directly to Forensic Architecture. Because the temporal and spatial metadata on images found on social media websites is not available, Forensic Architecture had to reconstruct this information by studying visual traces such as shadows and the shape of bomb clouds, to locate each image in time and space, and to compose a narrative of the day.
One of the videos examined included two still frames that captured bombs mid-fall, fractions of a second before impact. By locating the images within the 3D model, Forensic Architecture was able to identify the bombs as US-manufactured MK-84 / GBU-31 JDAMs, carrying one ton of explosives. Dropped in an inhabited civilian area, Amnesty International’s subsequent report has identified this use of the munition as a war crime.
A detailed schematic, presented here, based on a satellite photograph of Eastern Rafah taken on 1 August 2014 at 11.39am, shows Forensic Architecture’s working drawing developed during this investigation. It includes annotations of all forms of evidence it found and verified.
In May 2016 Israel canceled the Hannibal Directive, after legal experts cited its application on 1 August 2014 as the prime example of the command’s incompatibility with international law.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Part of Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture (March-May 2018).

Forensic Architecture is both the name of the agency established in 2010, and a form of investigative practice into state violence and human rights violations that traverses architectural, journalistic and legal fields, and shifts between critical reflections and tactical interventions.
Counter Investigations presents a selection of recent investigations undertaken by the agency into incidents occurring in different contexts worldwide. In parallel, the exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical and technological questions. Continuing to be explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, these investigations and propositions add up to a Short Course in Forensic Architecture.
Grounded in the use of architecture as an analytic device, Forensic Architecture has in recent years developed a host of new evidentiary methods that respond to our changing media landscape – exemplified in the widespread availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging and platforms for data sharing – and propose new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and activism.
Forensic Architecture has worked closely with communities affected by acts of social and political violence, alongside NGOs, human rights groups, activists, and media organisations. Their investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, and contested accounts given by state authorities, leading to military, parliamentary and UN inquiries.
Counter Investigations marks the beginning of a long term collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Forensic Architecture. The exhibition and this ongoing partnership exemplifies the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ intent to foster and explore new modes of civil practice operating across the fields of art, architecture and activism.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

From the Murder of Halit Yozgat
Kassel, Germany, 6 April 2006

On 6 April 2006, 21-year-old Halit Yozgat was murdered in his family run internet café in Kassel, Germany. His was the ninth of ten racist murders committed in Germany between 2000 and 2007 by a neo-Nazi group known as the National Socialist Underground (NSU). At the time of the killing Andreas Temme, an agent of the German domestic intelligence service (Verfassungsschutz), was present in the café. Temme claimed not to have witnessed the murder.
Within the 77 square metres of the internet café, and the 9 minutes 26 seconds during which the incident unfolded, different actors – members of migrant communities, a state employee and the murderers – were positioned in relation to each other in a manner yet to be made clear, but one whose implications bear great political significance. This unit of space and time stands as a microcosm of the social and political controversy known as the ‘NSU Complex’.
Commissioned by Unraveling the NSU Complex, a Germany-wide alliance of anti-racism activists, Forensic Architecture’s investigation became possible when hundreds of documents from the Hessen police investigation of the murder – reports, witness depositions, photographs, and computer and phone logs – were leaked at the end of 2015.
One of the most important pieces of evidence in this leak was a video of a police re-enactment performed by Andreas Temme. Such re-enactments are often ritualistic events forming part of an admission or confession, denoting justice fulfilled. In Forensic Architecture’s investigation the re-enactment is treated not only as a representation of an event, but an event in itself; a potential crime – of perjury and misrepresentation – in its own right.
Within a reconstructed real-scale physical model of the internet café – the exact dimensions of which are marked here on a black carpet – Forensic Architecture re-enacted this re-enactment in order to examine Temme’s testimony, while also carrying out further tests to analyse the threshold of sensory perception. A video presented here shows moments from this process of re-enactment.
The video triptych 77sqm_9:26min presents Forensic Architecture’s full analysis of the events surrounding Halit Yozgat’s murder. This investigation established that Temme’s testimony was untruthful, opening up to larger questions regarding the involvement of German state agencies with radical right-wing groups. As the NSU trial approaches its conclusion in 2018, the truth of the murder – and above all, Temme’s presence at the scene – remains obscured.
The mural presented here charts the events related to the production, presentation and subsequent contestation of Forensic Architecture’s analysis across multiple forums: press conferences, cultural institutions, public demonstrations, two parliamentary inquiries and a criminal court. In each of these forums, Forensic Architecture was obliged to defend its evidence according to different rules and conventions. The complexity of this flow diagram traces the indeterminate nature of counter forensics, its methods, limitations and points of impact.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]

Part of Counter Investigations by Forensic Architecture (March-May 2018).

Forensic Architecture is both the name of the agency established in 2010, and a form of investigative practice into state violence and human rights violations that traverses architectural, journalistic and legal fields, and shifts between critical reflections and tactical interventions.
Counter Investigations presents a selection of recent investigations undertaken by the agency into incidents occurring in different contexts worldwide. In parallel, the exhibition outlines five key concepts that raise related historical, theoretical and technological questions. Continuing to be explored in an accompanying series of public seminars, these investigations and propositions add up to a Short Course in Forensic Architecture.
Grounded in the use of architecture as an analytic device, Forensic Architecture has in recent years developed a host of new evidentiary methods that respond to our changing media landscape – exemplified in the widespread availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging and platforms for data sharing – and propose new modes of open-source, citizen-led evidence gathering and activism.
Forensic Architecture has worked closely with communities affected by acts of social and political violence, alongside NGOs, human rights groups, activists, and media organisations. Their investigations have provided decisive evidence in a number of legal cases, and contested accounts given by state authorities, leading to military, parliamentary and UN inquiries.
Counter Investigations marks the beginning of a long term collaboration between the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Forensic Architecture. The exhibition and this ongoing partnership exemplifies the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ intent to foster and explore new modes of civil practice operating across the fields of art, architecture and activism.
[Institute of Contemporary Arts]