Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth
<p>Forensics originated from the term “forensis” which is Latin for “pertaining to the forum.” The Roman forum was a multidimensional space of negotiation and truth-finding in which humans as well as objects participated in politics, law, and the economy. With the advent of modernity, forensics shifted to refer exclusively to the courts of law and to the use of medicine, and today as a science in service to the law. The present use of forensics, along with its popular representations have become increasingly central to the modes by which states police and govern their subjects.</p> <p>By returning to forensis this book seeks to unlock forensics’ original potential as a political practice and reorient it. Inverting the direction of the forensic gaze it designates a field of action in which individuals and organizations detect and confront state violations.</p> <p>The condition of forensis is one in which new technologies for mediating the “testimony” of material objects—bones, ruins, toxic substances, landscapes, and the contemporary medias in which they are captured and represented—are mobilized in order to engage with struggles for justice, systemic violence, and environmental transformations across the frontiers of contemporary conflict.</p>
Editors: Forensic Architecture, Eyal Weizman, Susan Schuppli, Shela Sheikh, Francesco Sebregondi, Thomas Keenan, Anselm Franke
Contributors: Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Nabil Ahmed, Maayan Amir, Hisham Ashkar, Ryan Bishop, Jacob Burns, Howard Caygill, Gabriel Cuéllar, DAAR, Eitan Diamond, Emily Dische-Becker, Anselm Franke, Grupa Spomenik, Ayesha Hameed, Charles Heller, Helene Kazan, Thomas Keenan, Steffen Krämer, Adrian Lahoud, Armin Linke, Jonathan Littell, Modelling Kivalina, Model Court, Gerald Nestler, Robert Jan van Pelt, Godofredo Pereira, Nicola Perugini, Alessandro Petti, Lorenzo Pezzani, Cesare P. R. Romano, Susan Schuppli, Francesco Sebregondi, Michael Sfard, Shela Sheikh, SITU Research, Caroline Sturdy Colls, John Palmesino, Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, Territorial Agency, Paulo Tavares, Füsun Türetken, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, NAO, Eyal Weizman, Ines Weizman, Chris Woods, Working Group Four Faces of Omarska
Managing Editor: Shela Sheikh
Copy Editor: Shela Sheikh, James Burton
Legal Editor: Eitan Diamond
Scientific Editor: James Burton
Designer: ZAK Group
Forensic Architecture, Sternberg Press