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This exhibition presents the work of the architects, artists, filmmakers, investigative journalists, and collaborators who make up the Forensic Architecture agency at Goldsmiths, University of London. Established in 2010, we use architecture as an investigative tool, primarily for the production and presentation of spatial evidence in the context of armed conflict and political struggles. Our evidence has been presented in international courts, truth commissions, human and environmental forums, and widely in the media. This exhibition arrives at a time of extreme escalation in the practice of state denial and propaganda. While exploring the development and transformation of the investigative practice that bears its name, the exhibition challenges us to consider how contemporary aesthetic practices and media technologies can be geared up to engage this reality of so-called post-truth.
The exhibition is organized into three parts. The first part presents Forensic Architecture’s investigation of the enforced disappearance of 43 students from the Escuela Normal Raúl Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa, in Iguala, Mexico, on 26–27 September 2014. Commissioned by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) and the Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Human Rights Center (Centro Prodh), the investigation maps the different narratives of perpetrators and victims, as well as attempts at the interruption of violence in relation to one of the most tragic events in the recent Mexican history.
The second and third parts of the show feature a selection of recent cases undertaken by Forensic Architecture and its collaborators, and their research on the relation between human violence and environmental destruction.
The perimeter wall, encircling the second and third parts of the exhibition, forms an extended essay that unpacks the theoretical and historical framework developed by Forensic Architecture, and a methodological reflection on a new investigative aesthetics.
Above: Opening of ‘Forensic Architecture: Towards an Investigative Aesthetics’ at the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City (MUAC)