The interpretations of the theme will be various, to say the least. The Latvian installation for instance, called ‘Matter to Matter’ will explore a natural phenomenon - condensation – to transform a technological glass surface into an interactive platform, a calm, sensory environment that reflects on the importance of the relationship between humans, nature and technology. Visitors will be encouraged to leave a temporal message, which naturally disappears within a couple of minutes. Equally pastoral seem the intentions of the Canadian installation, which is set to reveal the complexity of the nation with a 360-degree immersive experience that takes the viewer from coast to coast, on a journey that taps into towns whose names are inspired by emotions, from Happy Adventure, Newfoundland to Hope, British Columbia.

As could be expected, Forensic Architecture's project is a whole different league. Forensic Architecture is an independent research agency based at Goldsmiths University of London. Founded in 2011 by the British-Israeli architect Eyal Weizman, its interdisciplinary team of investigators includes filmmakers, software developers, archaeologists, lawyers, journalists and yes, even some architects. Basically, its totally new approach that revolutionized as well forensics as architecture starts from the observation that in today's overmediatized society, every single physical fact or event in the traditional space and time lapse has what one might describe as its 'virtual doubles'. While this has given rise to well-founded fears of a Big Brother society, the agency has made it its mission to make this new technology benefit rather than harm human rights, exploiting the proverbial cracks in the system, by retrieving these virtual data and combining them positively in a hybrid reconstruction of physical events that seemed destroyed and forever lost.

In so doing, Forensic Architecture acts as 'an architectural detective agency', uncovering facts that most often confound the stories told and imposed -top-down- by police, military, states and corporations. Its strategy fully exploits the rise of social media and a worldwide increase in availability of digital recording equipment, satellite imaging, remote sensing technology, alongside platforms for data sharing, which also allows them to collect the metadata bottom-up. While presenting objects and buildings as privileged witnesses of the prosecuted crime, the navigable 3D models, filmic animations, or interactive cartographies that result, are built by scraping thousands of images of a bombing off social media, or by comparing several CCTV camera positions, to map the daily life of an Aleppo hospital in the seconds before it is obliterated by pro-regime forces. but also by combining ancient as well as modern methods, such as the memorizing techniques of Roman orators and Elizabethan actors, when helping ex-prisoners reconstruct the secret prison of Saydnaya in Syria.

In a world saturated by images, where seemingly almost everything seems exposed to view, Forensic Architecture tries to make visible those things that are kept hidden. While the agency prefers to describe its activity “counter-forensics”, “forensics” being “the art of the police”, the architecture it practices is extremely compelling, both in the inventiveness, precision and patience of the processes and the crystalline outcomes.

Since its creation, the team has investigated the use of white phosphorus by the Israeli army during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and various cases of ‘targeted assassinations’ by Israeli and US drones in Gaza and Pakistan, but gradually its areas of interest also expanded beyond Israel and Palestine to wherever its help might be needed but still mostly to crimes committed by sovereign states,: the disappearance of students in Iguala in Mexico, a lethal factory fire in Karachi, a detention centre in Cameroon, where torture and executions took place with the apparent connivance of US personnel based there, the maritime path of a Libyan boat of migrants drifting helplessly in the Mediterranean Sea, the destruction of Guatemalan villages in the early-1980s genocide of the Ixil Maya people, and the spatial organisation of two concentration camps in former Yugoslavia.

Positioning itself 'on the side of civil society', Forensic Architecture has been continuously working with NGOs, and human rights, social justice and environmental organisations, but won’t take commissions from government or corporations. Its investigations invariably lead to the contestation of accounts of events given by state authorities, and have more than once given rise to citizen tribunals and truth commissions, military, parliamentary and UN inquiries, affecting legal and human rights processes. It has also given them a wide range of enemies and detractors though. Forensic Architecture have been dismissed by Germany’s ruling CDU party as factually challenged artists, by Assad as Qatari stooges, by the Kremlin-backed RT TV network as supporters of Islamic State, and in Israel they get called “Pallywood”, as in Palestinian Hollywood – especially since their research in the events of Black Friday, on 1 August 2014, when 2,000 Israeli bombs, missiles and shells were dropped on the city of Rafah, in the Gaza strip, contributed to the cancellation of the Hannibal Directive, a classified policy whereby the Israeli military might kill their own soldiers if they are taken prisoner, rather than allow them to become hostages.

Forensic Architecture has already announced that its installation at the London Biennale will be based on the studio’s work in the Sinjar area of Iraq, where it is training Kurdish-speaking Yazidis to document and collect evidence of destruction, genocide and enslavement perpetrated by terrorist Daesh (Islamic State) against the Yazda. The pavilion will showcase the processes of collecting, curating and reconstructing these images, as well as the objects used during the training of the Yazidi people, such as rigs that are made from kites.plastic bottles and helium balloons. 3D models of the sites destroyed by Daesh will be constructed using aerial photography and photogrammetry (geographic measurements taken from photos).and will serve as pieces of evidence for future litigation. „The project continues V&A’s exploration on digital reconstruction and cultural heritage, and interrogates the role that digital design can have in society today.“ V&A Co-Curators Natalie Kane and Brendan Cormier explain, „ Forensic Architecture are world-leaders in this discipline. So we are thrilled to be bringing a new investigation and really look forward to our collaboration.“

Meanwhile watch 77sqm_9.26min, a detailed online report that offers a step-by-step insight into a counter-investigation into one of a series of ten National Socialist Underground (NSU) and racially-motivated murders in Germany between 2000 and 2009, the motivation for which the police persistently refused to admit . The 21-year-old Halit Yozgat was the ninth victim, a member of the Turkish-German family, shot while working at the internet café run by his family in Kassel, the very city that also houses the Documenta, where this report was shown during last year's edition.

Watch the video of the report, which is currently also on show at Counter Investigations a survey exhibition of the work of Forensic Architecture at the ICA, London, present a selection of recent and new projects. by Forensic Architecture. Counter Investigations: Forensic Architecture, runs until 13 May. London Design Biennale takes place from 4-23 September 2018 at Somerset House, Strand, London. (mb)

For more info:

https://www.forensic-architecture.org/
http://www.londondesignbiennale.com/
https://www.ica.art/
Alexandra Piras
Beekman Foundation
Beekman Foundation EU
Beekman Foundation US