I.108 'When it Stopped Being a War': The Situated Testimony of Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah
Date of Incident
17 Oct 2023
Location
Al-Ahli Hospital, Gaza City
Forums
Exhibition, Media
Commissioned By
Self-Initiated
On 17 October 2023, a massive explosion at al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City killed hundreds of civilians sheltering in a courtyard. Together with Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a reconstructive surgeon working in the hospital when the blast occurred, we reconstructed the strike and its consequences.
I.105 German Colonial Genocide in Namibia: Shark Island
Date of Incident
1905 - 1908
Location
Lüderitz, ǃNamiǂNûs, ǁKharas region, Namibia
Forums
Exhibition, Human Rights Report, Media
In Partnership With
Ovaherero Traditional Authority (OTA), Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA)
During their genocidal campaign against the Ovaherero and Nama between 1904 and 1908, German colonial troops established five concentration camps across German Southwest Africa. Shark Island, also known as ‘Death Island’, was the most notorious. FA and Forensis worked with descendants of the camp’s victims and survivors to reconstruct this space of trauma, which today faces new threats of erasure.
I.95 The Killing of Dilan Cruz
Date of Incident
1 Nov 2019
Location
Bogotá, Colombia
Forums
Legal Process
Commissioned By
Fundación Comité de Solidaridad con los Presos Políticos (CSPP)
During the 2019 'national strike' demonstrations in Colombia, 18-year-old protester Dilan Cruz was shot by a bean bag round fired by police in Bogotá, and died two days later. The Colombian Attorney General subsequently published a report defending the killing and accusing Cruz of being part of a mob; our investigation shows how this conclusion derives from a misreading of the visual evidence.
I.93 The Nebelivka Hypothesis
Date of Incident
3500 BC - Ongoing
Location
Nebelivka, Ukraine
Forums
Exhibition
In Partnership With
David Wengrow
In partnership with David Wengrow, this project combines archaeological science with the tools of Forensic Architecture to examine the 6,000-year-old remains of the city of Nebelivka. By reading the soil as an archaeological artefact in its own right, a lost tradition of urban life is unearthed, offering a lens through which to interrogate core assumptions about urban space, power, and ecology.
I.91 Fire in Moria Refugee Camp
Date of Incident
8 Sep 2020
Location
Lesvos, Greece
Forums
Legal Process, Exhibition, Media
Commissioned By
Lawyers for the Moria 6
The fire which destroyed the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos was at least the 247th outbreak to have occurred in and around the overcrowded camp since 2013. Six young asylum seekers who came to be known as the 'Moria 6' were accused of arson and jailed. FA and Forensis reconstructed the fire’s spread, casting significant doubt on the basis for those convictions.
I.90 The Beirut Port Explosion: Destruction of Destruction
Date of Incident
4 Aug 2020 - Ongoing
Location
Beirut, Lebanon
Forums
None
In Partnership With
Febrayer Network
Following the 2020 Beirut port explosion, the city's grain silos suffered a prolonged period of steady ruination. To understand how the gradual destruction of a ruin happened behind state cordons in the nearly two-year period since the blast, Febrayer and FA reconstructed the site to present a unified account of the state’s mismanagement of this important site of material evidence and memory.
I.88 Restituting Evidence: Genocide and Reparations in German Colonial Namibia
Date of Incident
1904 - 1908
Location
Otjozondjupa, Omaheke, and Khomas, Namibia
Forums
Media
In Partnership With
The Ovaherero/Ovambanderu Genocide Foundation (OGF), Forensis
From 1904–1908, Germany committed genocide against the Herero, Mbanderu and Nama peoples in their colony of ‘South-West Africa’ (present-day Namibia). FA/Forensis partnered with genocide activists from descendant communities to begin to produce a body of digital evidence that can be leveraged in support of demands for land restitution and reparations.
I.79 Living Archaeology in Gaza
Date of Incident
7th Century BCE - Ongoing
Location
Gaza
Forums
Legal Process, United Nations, Human Rights Report, Media
Commissioned By
Self-Initiated
Decades of bombings and humanitarian disaster inflicted by the Israeli occupation have posed a constant threat not only to Palestinian lives but also to their cultural heritage. FA has conducted the first open-source excavation of this remarkable archaeological site along Gaza’s coastline, illustrating the myriad risks it faces.
I.76 Dispossession and The Memory of the Earth: Land Dispossession in Nueva Colonia
Date of Incident
1960s to the present day
Location
Nueva Colonia, Urabá Antioqueño, Colombia
Forums
Legal Process, Exhibition, Human Rights Report, Truth Commission, Web Platform
Commissioned By
The Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition of Colombia
This investigation shows how the dispossession of campesino farmers in the Urabá Antioqueño region of Nueva Colonia was achieved by a combination of physical violence, environmental transformations and legal means.
I.75 The Black Boxes of Disappearance: Enforced Disappearance in the Siege of the Palace of Justice
Date of Incident
6 Nov 1985 - 7 Nov 1985
Location
Bogotá, Colombia
Forums
Legal Process, Exhibition, Media, Truth Commission, Web Platform
Commissioned By
The Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition of Colombia
Our investigation examines the actions of the Colombian security forces in the aftermath of the 1985 siege of the Palace of Justice that resulted in the enforced disappearance of cafeteria workers, students, visitors, guerrillas, and judges.
I.74 The Murder of Lucas Villa
Date of Incident
5 May 2021
Location
Pereira, Colombia
Forums
Media
In Partnership With
Bellingcat, Cerosetenta, Baudo Agencia Pública
On the 5th of May 2021, Lucas Villa, a Colombian student, was shot and fatally wounded in Pereira, Colombia while participating in the National Strike. Our findings suggest Lucas was targeted in a coordinated assassination.
I.58 The Killing of Mark Duggan
Date of Incident
4 Aug 2011
Location
Tottenham, North London
Forums
Legal Process, Exhibition, Media
Commissioned By
Lawyers for the Duggan family
Mark Duggan’s killing by police led to the most widespread social unrest in the UK in a generation. A decade on, what happened remains unclear.
Using information in the public domain, we analysed both the event of the shooting, and the official investigations, in closer detail than ever before.
I.53 The Beating of Faisal al-Natsheh
Date of Incident
28 Feb 2014
Location
Occupied Hebron, Palestine
Forums
Exhibition, Media
In Partnership With
Breaking the Silence
In 2017, an Israeli soldier, now member of the NGO Breaking the Silence, confessed to have gravely beaten a Palestinian man. Following the Israeli state attempts to discount the account, we built a VR tool to collect and cross-reference testimony from the soldier and other witnesses.
I.43 Triple-Chaser
Date of Incident
26 Nov 2018
Location
Tijuana-San Diego border, US/Mexico; Gaza, Palestine; and around the world
Forums
Exhibition, Media
In Partnership With
Praxis Films
When US border agents fired tear gas grenades at civilians, including children, photographs linked the grenades to the Safariland Group, which is owned by Warren B. Kanders, the vice chair of the board of trustees of the Whitney Museum of American Art. In response to our invitation to the Whitney Biennial 2019, we developed machine learning classifiers to search for Safariland munitions online.
I.40 The Killing of Rouzan al-Najjar
Date of Incident
1 Jun 2018
Location
Khuzaa, Gaza
Forums
Media
In Partnership With
The New York Times
Amid the chaos and violence of the Great March of Return, a young Palestinian medic is struck and killed by a sniper's bullet. Together with the New York Times we used photogrammetry, video analysis, and figure modelling to locate the victim among the crowd at the moment she was shot, and traced a line of fire back to a sand berm on the Israeli side of the border fence.
I.35 The Destruction of Yazidi Cultural Heritage
Date of Incident
3 Aug 2014 - 13 Nov 2015
Location
Sinjar, Iraq
Forums
Legal Process, Citizens' Tribunal, Exhibition, Web Platform
In Partnership With
Yazda: Global Yazidi Organization
In August 2014, ISIL invaded the Sinjar, northern Iraq, home of the Yazidi religious minority. Thousands were enslaved, executed or displaced, and religious buildings were torn down.
We trained Yazda researchers in our techniques, and worked together to document the physical traces of genocide.
I.28 The Enforced Disappearance of the Ayotzinapa Students
Date of Incident
26 Sep 2014 - 27 Sep 2014
Location
Iguala, Mexico
Forums
Exhibition, Media, Web Platform
Commissioned By
Centro Prodh, Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense, EAAF
When Mexican police and local organised crime coordinated to attack a group of students, six people were murdered, forty wounded and forty-three 'disappeared'. We built an interactive platform to explore what happened that night, and to expose the inconsistencies in the state’s investigation of its own involvement in one of the most shocking moments of violence in the history of modern Mexico.
I.26 Destruction and Return in al-Araqib
Date of Incident
1 Jan 2010 - Ongoing
Location
al-Araqib, Negev/Naqab desert
Forums
Legal Process, Exhibition
Commissioned By
The Village of al-Araqib
The Bedouin village of al-Araqib has been demolished over 120 times since 1954. Every time, the villagers return.
Using aerial imagery and archaeological surveys, and in collaboration of local families, we provided evidence of ongoing inhabitation, against their dispossession by the Israeli state
I.23 Chemical Attack in Khan Sheikhoun
Date of Incident
4 Apr 2017
Location
Khan Sheikhoun, Syria
Forums
Human Rights Report, Media
Commissioned By
Human Rights Watch
The truth of an apparent chemical attack in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun quickly became obscured behind allegations and counter-allegations.
With Human Rights Watch, we investigated what the precise dimensions of the impact crater could tell us about the munition that had caused it.
I.19 Killing in Umm al-Hiran
Date of Incident
18 Jan 2017
Location
Umm al Hiran, Negev/Naqab desert
Forums
Legal Process, Exhibition
Commissioned By
Self-Initiated
A police raid on an ‘illegalised’ Bedouin village in the Naqab/Negev desert led to the deaths of a local man and an Israeli policeman.
Police quickly blamed the man for what they called a ‘terror attack’. In fact, as we exposed, Israeli police had fired unprovoked on an innocent driver, causing him to crash into them.
SP.1 A City Within a Building: The Mariupol Drama Theatre
Supported Project
Date of Incident
24 Feb 2022 - 16 Mar 2022
Location
Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre, Mariupol, Ukraine
Forums
Media
An FA-supported project by
The Center for Spatial Technologies (CST), Forensis
Before it was destroyed by a Russian airstrike, the Mariupol Theater was not only a key refuge in the besieged city but a unique site of solidarity and resistance. Working with Forensis and FA, the Center for Spatial Technologies assembled a vast archive of evidence and interviewed survivors of the strike to tell the story of a self-organised commune: a city within a building.
Photogrammetry⤵
Photogrammetry is a process by which large numbers of still photographs, of an object or environment, can be combined to create a precise and navigable 3D model. Photogrammetry software computes distances within a 2D image by a process of triangulation, taking into consideration metadata such as the focal length of the lens of the camera that captured the image.
Specific technical software then arranges every pixel from multiple overlapping images in 3D space, creating a ‘point cloud’ made of often hundreds of millions of individual pixels, or ‘points’. This point cloud can be anchored to its location in the real world, through a process known as ‘ground truthing’.