Known in Greece for their investigations of the murders of Pavlos Fyssas and Zak/Zackie Kostopoulos, FA will introduce a wide-ranging body of international casework, undertaken since the agency was founded by director Eyal Weizman in 2011. This presentation is focused on a core aspect of Forensic Architecture’s research, which they call “cartographies of violence”.

Informed by Harvard professor Rob Nixon and his book Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (2011), the projects presented here examine the slow and fast forms of violence that occur in conflict and war zones, but also in democracies worldwide. Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and erupting into instant visibility. ‘Fast violence’ refers to violence that is literal and immediate, which may be manifested through crackdowns on demonstrations, police brutality, the murder and forced disappearance of politicians or activists, border control, etc. It can also include military operations such as those employed during the War on Terror, occupation of land for military bases, and so on. ‘Slow violence’ is, on the other hand, a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction dispersed across time and space, a violence that is not always understood as violence at all. Climate catastrophe and toxic waste are two aspects of such violence, highly relevant in a world that is slowly realising the grave repercussions of humankind’s interference in environmental processes.