12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

Forensic Architecture work in London, UK

Cloud Studies (2021), Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg

Mobilized by state and corporate powers, toxic clouds colonize the air we breathe on different scales and at varying durations. Repressive regimes use tear gas to clear democratic protests from urban roundabouts. Carcinogenic plumes of petrochemical emissions smother racialized communities. Airborne chemicals such as chlorine, white phosphorous, and herbicides are weaponized to displace and terrorize. Forest arson in the tropics alters continent-wide meteorological conditions, forcing millions to breathe toxic air.

It is a basic principle of forensics that between solid objects “every contact leaves a trace.” In contrast, clouds are the epitome of transformation, their dynamics governed by nonlinear, multicausal logics. This condition has been apparent throughout the history of painting, when clouds moving faster than the painter’s brush could only be imagined rather than recorded.

Clouds are always double. Seen from the outside, they are measurable objects; seen from within, they are experiential conditions of optical blur and atmospheric obscurity. Today’s clouds are both environmental and political. Their toxic fog is easily surrounded by lethal doubt. When denialism obscures acts of violence and compounds the harm it inflicts, we, as cohabitants of toxic clouds, must find new paths of resistance.

Forensic Architecture: Eyal Weizman, Samaneh Moafi, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Sarah Nankivell, Mark Nieto, Maksym Rokmaniko, Christina Varvia, Francesco Sebregondi, Shourideh C. Molavi, Stefan Laxness, Grace Quah, Jason Men, Nichola Czyz, Nabil Ahmed, Paulo Tavares, Olukoye Akinkugbe, Lola Conte, Robert Trafford, Ariel Caine, Manuel Correa, Sabine Saba, Omar Ferwati, Martyna Marciniak, Sanjana Varghese, Ayana Enomoto-Hurst, Ana Lopez Sanchez-Vegazo, Caterina Selva, Jacob Bertilsson, Nicholas Zembashi, Nicholas Masterton, Tom James, Giovanna Reder, Tamara Z. Jamil, Lachlan Kermode, Alican Aktürk, Ronni Winkler, Robert Krawczyk, Will Scarfone, Nick Axel, Camila E. Sotomayor, Vere Van Gool, Jacob Burns, Hania Halabi, Gustav A. Toftgaard, Nathan Su, Rosario Güiraldes, Susan Schuppli, Ana Naomi de Sousa, Kishan San, Mhamad Safa, Dimitra Andritsou, Sergio Beltrán-García, Dorette Panagiotopoulou, Elizabeth Breiner.

Center for Spatial Technologies & Forensic Architecture

Center for Spatial Technologies work in Kyiv, UA, and Berlin, DE

Russian Strike on the Kyiv TV tower (2022), Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin

The Russian strike on the TV tower at the heart of Kyiv, Ukraine, on March 1, 2022—the sixth day of the invasion of Ukraine—has raised a number of tragic historical echoes. Landing in the vicinity of Babyn Yar, where one of the worst massacres of the Holocaust took place, it led to condemnation from all over the world. The Ukrainian group Center for Spatial Technologies and Forensic Architecture gathered numerous videos, maps, and archival materials in order to study how these strikes hit not only media and communication networks, but a tangled nervous system of historical references and repressed memories. Over the course of the German occupation of Kyiv between 1941 and 1943, approximately one hundred thousand people—Jews, Ukrainian political prisoners, Romani, Soviet Prisoners of War, and patients of the psychiatric hospital—were murdered on this site. Building upon the long-term work of the Center for Spatial Technologies for the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, this investigation considers the missiles aimed at the tower as needle probes that pierce through historical strata, connecting the present war with the deep history of the site.

Exhibitions

Three Doors, 2022, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt/Main (DE)

Cloud Studies, 2021, VISUAL Carlow, Carlow (IR) und The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, Manchester (UK) (solo)

Critical Zones, 2020, ZKM | Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (DE)

Triple-Chaser, 2019, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City (US)

Looking and Showing, 2019, Invisible Institute, Chicago (US) und Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago (US)

Centre for Contemporary Nature, 2019, Ujazdowski Castle – Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (PL)

The Long Duration of a Split Second – Turner Prize 2018, 2018, Tate Britain, London (UK)

documenta 14, 2017, Neue Galerie, Kassel (DE)

Counter Investigations, 2018, ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (UK) (solo)