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Like proof, evidence typically refers to things, traces, marks, or signs, that can be studied to establish relevant facts and evaluate competing theories. But while proof has been associated with tests and verification procedures since the thirteenth century, evidence (or the Latin evidentia) refers to something that is “manifest to the senses” and “obvious”– there in a way that is not subject to dispute. To examine evidence is thus to contend with the politics of presence, practices of display, and conditions of access. In this episode, Megan Eardley discusses these concerns with Eyal Weizman, who is a critical proponent for forensic research in architecture today.

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  • “Many of us, if not all of us, come from different backgrounds in political activism, broadly speaking… perhaps several years ago [we] would have been content to hear things like the law (and you want to reach for your gun), expertise (and you want to pick up a five kilo hammer), normative frameworks like human rights etc (I myself less than 8 years ao published a big critique of human rights in a book called “The Least of All Possible Evils”)–all of a sudden found ourselves standing and affirming a positive relation to truth.” Excerpt from Eyal Weizman, “Propositions #7/1: Counter Forensics,” lecture at BAK, Utrecht, 18/10/2018 Watch

  • “In 2010 Weizman established an architectural practice he calls Forensic Architecture, since then Forensic Architecture has become an interdisciplinary team of architects, artists, lawyers, and scientists that investigate human rights abuses and forms of state and corporate violence that are imprinted and can be made visible within the built environment.”

  • “The Threshold of detectability requires research to move in two directions: towards technical design and material research, on one hand, and towards social network, institutional practices, and memory work, on the other.”

  • “Obviously, memory has also thresholds by which things are no longer registered.”

  • “Always look on both sides; every camera records from both of its ends; it records the events on the ground and records its own technical process of recording.”

  • “He suggests that their method of open verification can create a powerful kind of shared understanding which emphasizes open access and interpretation of material records.”

  • “You need to understand how to navigate across scales, how to analyze something sometimes on the scale of DNA. on the scale of a single frame, on the scale of a single gunshot, listening to it for a year and a half.”

Credit

Producers
Ethan Curtis, Arianna Corradi, and Joseph Bedford

Issue Guest Editor
Megan Eardley

Senior Editors
Joseph Bedford and Curt Gambetta

Announcer
Trudy Watt

Interviewee
Eyal Weizman

Interviewer
Megan Eardley

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