Monday, November 29th, 2021, 7pm
EXHIBITION AS ANOTHER FORUM FOR ACTION
Christina Varvia in conversation with Doreen Mende and the students.
The talk is already available on our Youtube channel.
Image: Installation shot of Counter Investigations, a retrospective exhibition of Forensic Architecture at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK, Photograph: Mark Blower
Exhibition as another forum for action
It will come to no surprise to anyone to claim the museum, the gallery, and other exhibition spaces, as sites of power. When exhibiting, power is articulated through visuality: the choice of what to show and how. Thinking along these lines curatorial practice can also be considered as a political proposition that is conversant with political initiatives beyond the artworld, elsewhere, in other political arenas and forums.
This session will discuss the political dimensions of making exhibitions through the work of Forensic Architecture: an interdisciplinary research agency that undertakes human rights investigations with architectural and media tools. Forensic Architecture (FA) presents its work as evidence in courts, parliamentary inquiries, UN assemblies, people’s tribunals, through the media, and in exhibitions. While none of these forums are perfect platforms, FA treats these institutions as sites of action, intervention, and debate. When considering exhibitions as “another” forum for political intervention, the task of curating is to activate the art space, by aligning the performative power of exposition with political action elsewhere. In fact, the word forensics where FA takes its name, has its root to the Latin word forensis, which means “pertaining to the forum”, whereas the Roman forum was “a multidimensional space of politics, law, and economy” (Weizman, 2012). Thus, the practice of forensis is forensics in an expanded sense, the ability of assemblies to articulate notions of truth through the presentation of evidence. How are then truth claims and political objectives articulated through exhibition making?
When exhibiting casework in art spaces Forensic Architecture comes with a bag of challenges. When and how to exhibit horrific acts of violence? How can we avoid replicating a violent gaze or the further victimisation of people or communities through the glorification of violent imagery? How to avoid retraumatisation or triggering? The seminar will also introduce these challenges which engage directly with politics of representation in practice.