AUTOPSIES: Modes of Counter-Investigation
Roundtable with Forensic Architecture and The Art of Counter-Investigation
Special Edition event in the series ‘Autopsies: Conversations between Collections and Research’
How do we critically engage archives of colonial, historical, political, and racial violence? What modes of counter investigation might be employed? Researchers from Forensic Architecture (London), the project ‘The Art of Counter-Investigation’ (Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt), and the fields of media and film studies will discuss the challenges of archival investigation in the contexts of colonial and political violence. Questions include forensic methods of investigation and counter investigation, aesthetic practices of engaging archives, issues of restitution and reparation, acts of erasure, silencing, and epistemic violence.
The event expands upon the midday Autopsies-conversation between Hans Peter Hahn (Ethnology) and Aïsha Othmann (Goethe University Library) on the Frankfurt University Library's Koloniales Bildarchiv.
Audience members are asked to screen in advance Forensic Architecture's project video, freely available here: https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/swakopmund
Participants of the Roundtable:
- Agata Nguyen Chuong (Forensic Architecture, London)
- Felix Trautmann and Franziska Wildt (The Art of the Counter Investigation, Institute for Social Research Frankfurt)
- Laliv Melamed (Professor of Digitial Film Cultures, GU Frankfurt)
Agata Nguyen Chuong (she/her) is an advanced researcher at Forensic Architecture and project lead of FA’s research into the Ovaherero and Nama genocide
Laliv Melamed is professor of digital film culture at Goethe University, Frankfurt. She received her PhD from New York University and specializes in documentary and non-fiction film and media. She is the author of Sovereign Intimacy: Private Media and the Traces of Colonial Violence (University of California Press, 2023).
Felix Trautmann is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Social Research and currently works in the research project „The Art of the Counter-Investigation“ (IfS Frankfurt and HfG Offenbach) on artistic investigations of right-wing violence in contemporary Germany
Franziska Wildt is a research associate at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. She co-directs the Working Group ‘Aesthetics and Media Cultures’.
