„Forensis as Critical Practice”

Frohne, Ursula; Weizman, Eyal

Zusammenfassung

In this conversation, art historian Ursula Frohne speaks with Eyal Weizman, founding director of Forensic Architecture, about the meaning of the term “forensis,” the production of facts and spatial navigational viewing. Departing with an explanation of the programmatic term “forensis,” the conversation centers around the investigative work of the international collective of experts. Weizman describes its specific approach to the production of evidence in distinction to the problematic historical resonances of forensic methods. Defining it as a kind of counter-forensis, it works as critical practice in relation to contested political and juridical issues, including, for example, the unresolved murder of the 21-year-old Halit Yozgat at the desk of his family-run internet café in the city of Kassel by the National Socialist Underground (NSU) movement on April 6, 2006. To determine the circumstances, Forensic Architecture recreated the internet café in its original size, while in parallel, it applied exact measurements to digitally simulate the spread of gunpowder smells in the rooms, the sound of the shooting and other details of the factual occurrence. With the available scientifically generated data, it was possible to draw a clear conclusion of the actual sequence of events, which were further manifested by close readings of the material language of the reconstructed constellations as evidence. The visualized research of Forensic Architecture also contributed to the formation of an alliance of civil society organizations known as “Unraveling the NSU Complex,” which commissioned Forensic Architecture to investigate the agents’ testimony a decade after the murder, in 2016.