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.87 Shireen Abu Akleh: The Extrajudicial Killing of a Journalist
Date of Incident
11 May 2022
Location
Jenin, Palestine
Forums
Legal Process, United Nations, Human Rights Report
In Partnership With
Al-Haq, Al Haq’s Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit
On 11 May 2022, while reporting on a raid by Israeli occupying forces on the Jenin refugee camp, Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akhleh was fatally shot by a convoy of IOF military vehicles. With Al-Haq, we showed that she and her colleagues were explicitly targeted in an unprovoked attack by an IOF marksman despite being identifiable as press, and that she was deliberately denied medical aid.
I.77 Racist Terror Attack in Hanau: The Arena Bar
Date of Incident
19 Feb 2020
Location
Hanau, Germany
Forums
Media, Parliamentary Inquiry
Commissioned By
Initiative 19. Februar, Lawyers for the Gültekin family
On 19 February 2020, in Hanau, Germany, a racist terror attack left nine people dead, six of them in or near the local Arena bar. There are reports that the bar’s emergency exit was routinely locked, and the victims of the attack didn’t run towards it for that reason. We examined whether, had they tried to do so, and it had been open, they could have survived the attack.
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.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.
I.24 The Murder of Halit Yozgat
Date of Incident
6 Apr 2006
Location
Kassel, Germany
Forums
Citizens' Tribunal, Exhibition, Media, Parliamentary Inquiry
Commissioned By
The People's Tribunal 'Unraveling the NSU Complex'
Halit Yozgat was murdered by neo-Nazis at the desk of his internet café in Kassel, Germany, while a state intelligence agent was sitting just metres away. The agent claimed he didn’t hear the gunshots, didn’t smell the gunpowder, and didn’t see the body. Using digital models and 1:1 physical reconstructions, we tested those claims.
I.18 Torture in Saydnaya Prison
Date of Incident
1 Jan 2011 - Ongoing
Location
Saydnaya, Syria
Forums
Legal Process, Exhibition, Media, Web Platform
Commissioned By
Amnesty International
Since the start of the Syrian Civil War, thousands of Syrians have been detained, tortured and executed at the notorious Saydnaya Prison.
Using architectural and acoustic modelling, we worked with five survivors to rebuild the prison and explore their memories of life and death inside its walls.
Reenactment⤵
Reenactment has a long history in forensics. Police have long made those suspected of committing a crime reenact the events of which they are accused, often at the end of an investigation, as an individual’s admission of guilt.
In Forensic Architecture’s practice, reenactment takes a number of forms, but is always a means of testing real-world phenomena—smoke dissipation, for example, or the movement of a car down a hill—against results derived from digital simulation. This is a process we refer to as ‘ground truthing’.