Excursion

Forensic architecture share their project ‘Ground Truth: The al- Araqib Museum of struggle’ within the program of The Future of Demonstrations at REAKTOR Vienna. The project is a collaboration with the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Araqib and their on going struggle for their ancestral land in the Naqab Desert. 
On the first event which is a presentation of the project by Aziz al-Turi (Bedouin Activist), Ariel Caine (Project Coordinator & researcher) and Eyal Weizman (Principle Investigator). Aziz shares his and his villagers personal story, as well as his experience with activist methodologies and determination to continue working on the case. Ariel introduces in detail the projects methodologies used such as the D.I.Y drones made by combining flying kites, cameras and other basic materials such as elastic bands, which was used to fly over the area in case study, documenting the interventions by the israelly forces, exposing manipulations of landscape that attempt to erase geographical traces of ancestral land. The team then uses these images and transforms the mass of data into whole satelleite 3d imagery, which can account for in detail geographical interferance. This project not only exposes the conflict over culture, identity and territory between Israel and Palastine but also how forestation is not A-political, here in fact forestry is used as a weapon to cover up and refigure geography with a geopolitical agenda.

The next day some students attended a workshop ‘Civic Science and The View from Above’ held by the collective where they learnt the technique of photogrammatry as well as how to make their own kite drone.

Founded in 2010 Forensic Architecture (FA) is a group that has developed a new practise for undertaking investigations into political controversies and human rights abuses. This practice uses architecture as an optical device to generate evidence, and cross references it with a variety of sources, such as new media, remote sensing, material analysis, witness testimony, and crowd-sourcing. Bringing together architectural, artistic and media research, FA constitutes a radical formulation of media art in the 21st century. Its work seeks to reverse the direction of the forensic gaze and to turn it back on those very state agencies - the police, military or secret services - that otherwise use forensics (surveillance, tracking and pattern analysis) to govern or control populations.
-Biography provided by The Future of Demonstrations.