Investigations Archive - Forensic Architecture

UAV : Unmanned Aerial Violence

Forensic Architecture is working with the UN SRCT, human rights and legal justice organisations in both Pakistan and the UK to develop an online platform that visualises drone strikes over Pakistan, Afghanistan,Yemen, Somalia, and Palestine. Using information derived several data aggregators, this platform allows users to examine the overall patterns of drone attacks from 2004 onwards as well as specific strikes such as the March 17 2011 attack on a Jirga (community gathering) which resulted in the death of 43-50 people.

Guatemala: Operacion Sofia

Between 1960 and 1996 Guatemala suffered one of the most brutal of Latin America’s civil wars. During the conflict more than 200,000 people were killed, about 80 percent of them Maya civilians. “Operacion Sofia”, a scorched earth military campaign undertook in the early 80′s, attempted to systematically destroy the cultural, spiritual and environmental means of survival of entire Mayan communities in the highlands of the country. American historian Gregg Grandin called these successive military operations “The Last Colonial Massacre”.

Forensic Oceanography

Forensic Oceanography (FO) is an investigation into the conditions that have caused the death of more than 1500 persons fleeing Libya across the Central Mediterranean in the Spring of 2011 (estimate by UNHCR). FO has so far provided its expertise in spatial analysis to a number of organisations and institutions who have conducting inquiries into these deaths. The project will further seek to devise ways in which a wide range of technologies and media might be used to document violations of human rights at sea and increase accountability in the future.

White Phosphorus

The project sets out to challenge the legal status of white phosphorus munitions, as regulated by current international law. Drawing on existing visual documentation of white phosphorus firings – from news footage, reporters’ photographs or activist and witness videos – Forensic Architecture has collaborated with research firm Situ Studio, human rights lawyers Emily Schaeffer and Michael Sfard, and weapon expert Chris Cobb-Smith, to produce an interactive report on the effects of white phosphorus munitions used in dense urban areas. The interactive report is now public.

Living Death Camps

Living Death Camps is a project that seeks to investigate the multiple relations between two concentration/death camps located in the former Yugoslavia and the problems associated with commemorating their histories. Neither the Staro Sajmište, Nazi camp from WWII built on the site of a former fairground at the edge of the city and now located in the centre of Belgrade, nor the Omarska/Prijedor camp used to incarcerate and execute Muslim men in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s can simply be consigned to history because they are spatial relics from the past.

The Death of Bassem Abu Rahma

Our work in the emergent area of video-to-space analysis is exemplified by the investigation in the death of Bassem Abu Rahma, a Palestinian protester killed by a tear gas grenade shot by Israeli Defense Forces in 2009. The report – produced by Situ Studio and Forensic Architecture, in conjunction with Attorney Michael Sfard and the Israeli Human Rights organization B’Tselem – was instrumental in re-opening a legal file that had been closed due to the alleged legality of the angle at which the munition was fired.