Tackling politics, religion, war and history, Broomberg & Chanarin prise open the fault lines associated with such imagery, creating new responses and pathways towards an understanding of the human condition. Trained as photographers they now work across diverse media, reacting to the photojournalistic experience of being embedded with the British Army in Afghanistan (and the controlled access to frontline action therein) with an absurd, conceptual riposte, composed of a series of abstract, six-metre swathes of photographic paper exposed to the sun for 20 seconds, for the work “The Day Nobody Died” (2008). Through painstaking restitution of found objects or imagery, for example the long-lost set of the film Catch-22 which was exhumed by the artists in Mexico for their work “Dodo” (2014), Broomberg & Chanarin enact an archeology or exorcism of aesthetic and ideological constructs behind the accepted tropes of visual culture, laying bare its foundations for fresh interpretation. Language and literature play an increasing role as material for their multifaceted work, from the philosophical underpinnings in Bertolt Brecht’s “War Primer” to the sacred texts of the Holy Bible itself, both books having been refashioned and recreated by the artists in their own ambiguous, combatant image.
Adam Broomberg (born 1970, Johannesburg, South Africa) and Oliver Chanarin (born 1971, London, UK) are artists living and working in London. They are professors of photography at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg, Germany and The Royal Academy of Art (KABK) at The Hague in The Netherlands. Together they have had numerous solo exhibitions at institutions including Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, UK (2018); Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2018); Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg, Sweden (2017); C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2016); the Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD, USA (2016); the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland (2015); The Freud Museum, London, UK (2015); ICA Studio, London, UK (2015); Jumex Foundation, Mexico City, Mexico (2014); FotoMuseum, Antwerp, Belgium (2014); Mostyn, Llandudno, UK (2014); Townhouse, Cairo, Egypt (2010); Musée de l’Elysee, Lausanne, France (2009) and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2006). Their participation in international group shows includes the ‘British Art Show 8’ (2015-2017); ‘Conflict, Time, Photography’ at Tate Modern, London, UK; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany (2015); Shanghai Biennale , China (2014); Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2014); Tate Britain , London, UK (2014); Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar (2013); Gwanju Biennale, South Korea (2012) and the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2011). Their work is held in major public and private collections including Tate, MoMA, Stedelijk, the V&A, the International Center of Photography, Musée de l’Élysée, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Major awards include the ICP Infinity Award (2014) for “Holy Bible”, and for “War Primer 2”, the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2013 and the Photo Text Book Award at the Arles Photo Festival in 2018.
Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, consisting of architects, artists, filmmakers, journalist, software developers, scientists, lawyers, and an extended network of collaborators from a wide variety of fields and disciplines. Founded in 2010 by Prof. Eyal Weizman, FA is committed to the development and dissemination of new evidentiary techniques and undertakes advanced architectural and media investigations on behalf of international prosecutors, human rights and civil society groups, as well as political and environmental justice organisations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’tselem, Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the UN, among others.
‘Forensic architecture’ is also an emergent academic field that refers to the production and presentation of architectural evidence in legal forums, including courts, and for advocacy purposes. Both ‘forensics’ and ‘architecture’ refer to well-established disciplinary frames; brought together, they shift each other’s meaning, giving rise to a different mode of practice. While architecture turns the attention of forensics to buildings, details, cities, and landscapes, and adds an essential method of investigation, forensics turns architecture into an investigative practice, and demands that architects pay close attention to the materiality of the built environment and its representation through data and media.
The necessity for Forensic Architecture as a practice emerges from the fact that contemporary conflicts increasingly take place within urban areas where homes and neighbourhoods become targets and most civilian casualties occur within cities and buildings. Crucial evidence is now generated on an unprecedented scale by both civilians and participants in conflict and shared widely across social and mainstream platforms.
While such developments have contributed to the complexity of forms of conflict and control, they have also enabled new means of monitoring. As urban battlefields become ever denser and more complex data and media environments, FA believes that human rights analysis must fully engage with the challenges of new media and the participatory, citizen-generated, and open-source evidence generated therein.
Grounded in the use of architecture as a methodological and analytic device, with which to investigate armed conflicts, environmental destruction and other political struggles, Forensic Architecture's new forms of investigations cross-reference multiple evidence sources by employing spatial and material analysis, remote sensing, mapping and reconstruction, and extend outwards to overlay elements of witness testimony and the cumulative forms of visual documentation enabled by contemporary media.
Tools and techniques developed by FA for analysing and presenting state and corporate violations of human rights across the globe involve modelling dynamic events as they unfold in space and time by creating navigable 3D models, filmic animations of environments undergoing conflict, and conceiving of interactive cartographies on the urban or architectural scale. The agency also develops open source software that facilitates collective research together with victim groups and stake holders.
The beneficiaries of FA’s research are the victims of human rights violations, communities at risk in conflict zones, their representatives or organizations advocating or prosecuting on their behalf. FA presents their evidence in written, video, and/or interactive form to convey complex human rights violations in a convincing, precise, and accessible manner, crucial for the pursuit of accountability.
In recent years, Forensic Architecture has undertaken, together with and on behalf of the victims, a series of investigations internationally into state crimes and human rights violations, spanning events from war crimes to instances of politically and racially motivated violence to the lethal effects of the EU’s policies of non-assistance for migrants in the Mediterranean. These investigations have led to the contestation of accounts of events given by state authorities, affecting legal and human rights processes, giving rise to citizen tribunals and truth commissions, military, parliamentary and UN inquiries. Through these forums, this analysis has provided unique and decisive evidence about incidents with which other methods could not have engaged.
Through their detailed and critical investigations, Forensic Architecture presents how public truth is produced – technologically, architecturally, and aesthetically – and how it can be used to confront authority and to expose new forms of state-led violence.
Natalie Bookchin is an artist whose work exposes social realities that lie beneath the surface of life lived under the glare and the shadow of the Internet.
Her critically acclaimed films and installations have been exhibited around the world including at MoMA, LACMA, PS1, Mass MOCA, the Walker Art Center, the Pompidou Centre, MOCA LA, the Whitney Museum, the Tate, and Creative Time. She has received numerous grants and awards, including from Creative Capital, California Arts Council, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Durfee Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, California Community Foundation, the Daniel Langlois Foundation, a COLA Artist Fellowship, the Center for Cultural Innovation, the MacArthur Foundation, a NYSCA Individual Artist Fellowship, a NYFA Opportunity Grant and most recently a NYSCA/MAAF award, among others.
Bookchin is a professor of Media and Graduate Director in the Department of Art & Design at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She lives in Brooklyn.
James Bridle is an artist and writer working across technologies and disciplines. His artworks and installations have been exhibited in Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia, and have been viewed by hundreds of thousands of visitors online. He has been commissioned by organisations including the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Barbican, Artangel, the Oslo Architecture Triennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and been honoured by Ars Electronica, the Japan Media Arts Festival, and the Design Museum, London. His writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including “Frieze”, “Wired”, “Domus”, “Cabinet”, “the Atlantic”, “the New Statesman”, and many others, in print and online, and he has written a regular column for “the Observer”. "The New Dark Age", his book about technology, knowledge, and the end of the future, was published by Verso (UK & US) in 2018. He lectures regularly on radio, at conferences, universities, and other events, including SXSW, Lift, the Global Art Forum, Re:Publica and TED. He was been a resident at Lighthouse, Brighton, the White Building, London, and Eyebeam, New York, and an Adjunct Professor on the Interactive Telecommunications Programme at New York University. His work can be found at jamesbridle.com.
Cameron-James Wilson is a British fashion photographer and visual artist with over a decade of experience in the industry. Seeking inspiration in a new medium, Cameron began experimenting in 3D modeling and CGI, and created Shudu – the World’s First Digital Supermodel. He has since founded The Diigitals, an all digital modeling agency created to demonstrate the potential of 3D fashion modeling and showcase its application for innovative brands. Through his work, Cameron hopes to champion diversity in both the fashion and digital worlds and collaborate with creators from emerging economies and under-represented communities.
Harun Farocki (1944-2014) was born in German-annexed Czechoslovakia. From 1966 to 1968 he attended the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB). In addition to teaching posts in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Manila, Munich and Stuttgart, he was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Farocki made close to 120 films, including feature films, essay films and documentaries. He worked in collaboration with other filmmakers as a scriptwriter, actor and producer. In 1976 he staged Heiner Müller's plays The Battle and Tractortogether with Hanns Zischler in Basel, Switzerland.
He wrote for numerous publications, and from 1974 to 1984 he was editor and author of the magazine Filmkritik (München). His work has shown in many national and international exhibitions and installations in galleries and museums.
For more than four decades of prolific dedication to photography, Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955) has developed a both artistic and theoretical activity, which focuses on the conflicts between nature, technology, photography and truth, and explores the documentary and narrative dimension of photography and related media.
He has received solo shows at MoMA (NY, 1988), the Art Institute (Chicago, 1990), IVAM (Valencia, 1992), MNAC (Barcelona,1999), Maison Européenne de la Photographie (París, 2014), Science Museum (London, 2014), Museum Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt, 2015), and Museo de Arte del Banco de la República (Bogotá, 2016) among others. Besides those institutions, his artwork has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), San Francisco MoMA, Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Center for Creative Photography (Tucson), George Eastman House (Rochester), National Gallery of Art (Ottawa), Folkwang Museum (Essen), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), MACBA (Barcelona), MNCARS (Madrid) and others.
He has authored a dozen of books about aspects of history, aesthetics and epistemology of photography, being the last one “The Fury of Images. Notes on Postphotography”, 2016.
In 1994, he was appointed Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. In 1998, he was awarded the National Prize in Photography bestowed by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. In 2011 received the National Prize in Visual Arts, bestowed by the Catalan Government and the National Prize of Theoretical Essay, by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. In 2013 he received the Hasselblad Award international prize.
Maria Mavropoulou was born in 1989 and she lives and works in Athens, Greece. She completed her MFA studies in 2018, at the Athens School of Fine Arts, from where she got her BA in 2014. She has studied painting and sculpture, although her main medium is photography.
Characteristic of her work is that the resulting images are at the boundary line between plausibility or not, potentiality and non-potentiality, random and constructed. By playing with the perception of viewers she questions the role and power of photography in an era that is dominated by it.
Since 2014 she is member of the collective of artists Depression Era that inhabit the urban and social landscapes of the crisis in Greece.
Her work has been presented in exhibitions in Greece and abroad and publicized in multiple magazines.
Panos Mazarakis was born in Athens in 1989. He studied sociology at the University of the Aegean in Mytilene and photography and video at the Focus School of Photography and New Media in Athens. In 2017, he was selected to present his work at the Athens Photo Festival in the category of Young Greek Photographers. His works have been presented in group exhibitions of photography and video art in Europe, Asia and America.
Rabih Mroué, born in Beirut and currently lives in Berlin, is a theatre director, actor, visual artist and playwright. He is a contributing editor for The Drama Review /TDR (New York). He is also a co-founder of the Beirut Art Center (BAC).
He was a fellow at The International Research Center: Interweaving Performance Cultures/ FU/Berlin, 2012 - 2015. He is a theatre-director at Münchner Kammerspiele (Munich).
His works include: “Sand in the eyes” (2017), “Rima Kamel” (2017), “Ode to Joy” (2015), “Riding on a cloud” (2013), “33 RPM and a Few Seconds” (2012), “The Pixelated revolution” (2012), “The Inhabitants of images” (2008), “Who’s Afraid of Representation” (2005) and others...
He has performed and exhibited internationally including dOCUMENTA (13) - Kassel, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo - Madrid, The ICP Triennial, MoMa - New York , Centre Pompidou – Paris, SALT – Istanbul, among others.
Penelope Umbrico’s installations, video, and digital media works utilize photo-sharing and consumer-to-consumer websites as an expansive archive to explore the production and consumption of images. Her work navigates between producer and consumer, local and global, the individual and the collective, with attention to the technologies that are produced by (and produce) these forces. Umbrico’s work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY; MassMoCA, MA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Milwaukee Art Museum, WI; Art Museum Gosta, Finland; Foto Colectania, Barcelona, Spain; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Daegu Photography Biennale, Korea; Pingyao International Photography Festival, China; Kunstverein Ludwigshafen, Germany; Rencontres d’Arles, France; Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Australia; among many others. She has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship; Sharpe-Walentas Studio Grant; Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship; New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship; Anonymous Was a Woman Award. Her monographs have been published by Aperture NYC and RVB Books Paris.
Jon Rafman was born in 1981 in Montreal, Canada. He studied Philosophy and Literature at McGill University in Montreal and received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work explores the impact of technology on contemporary consciousness, incorporating the rich vocabulary of virtual worlds to create poetic narratives that critically engage with the present.
Rafman's recent solo exhibitions include The Mental Traveller, Fondazione Modena Arti Visive (2018), Dream Journal 16' - 17', Sprueth Magers Berlin (2017), I Have Ten Thousand Compound Eyes and Each is Named Suffering, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2016), Westfälischer Kunstverein, Munster (2016), Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal (2015), and The Zabludowicz Collection, London (2015). His works have been featured in prominent international group exhibitions, including Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal (2017), K11 Art Shanghai (2017), Suspended Animation, Les Abattoirs, Toulouse (2017), Sharjah Biennial (2017), Berlin Biennial 9 (2016), Manifesta Biennial for European Art 11 (2016), The Future of Memory, Kunsthalle Wien (2015), Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Fridericianum, Kassel (2015), and Biennale de Lyon (2015). He recently created video for a production of Albert Ginastera’s opera “Bomarzo” at the Teatro Real, Madrid (2017).
Mónika Sziládi uses lens-based photography and digital photomontage as a tool to observe and digest the effects of technology on human behavior. Her work explores how wireless technology affect us as social beings by altering our physical and virtual interactions, and how the ease of picture taking and sharing redefined our relationship to images, including those of ourselves.
Sziládi was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary and lives in New York. She holds an MFA in Photography from Yale (2010) and a Maitrise in Art History and Archaeology from Sorbonne, Paris (1997). She was a 2014–2015 resident at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's “Workspace”, a 2012-2013 resident at Smack Mellon (NYC), and a 2008 resident at Skowhegan (Maine). She is a winner of The Philadelphia Museum of Art Photography Competition (2010), a recipient of the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship (2010), a Juror’s Pick by Julie Saul and Alec Soth, Work-in-Progress Prize, Daylight/CDS Photo Awards (2010), the recipient of Humble Arts' Fall 2012 New Photography Grant, and the 2015 Center Awards Curator's Choice. Solo exhibitions include “Wide Receivers & Tight Ends”, Smack Mellon, NYC (2014); “Wide Receivers”, Godot Galeria, Budapest, Hungary (2010 and 2013). Selected group exhibitions include “Queens International”, Queens Museum, NYC (2016); “Ready for My Close-up”, Hagedorn Foundation Gallery, Atlanta, GA (2013); “31 Women in Art Photography”, Hasted Kraeutler, NYC (2012); US Featured Exhibition, Flash Forward Festival, Toronto (2010); “Market Forces”, Carriage Trade Gallery, NYC and Galerie Erna Hecey, Brussels (2009); “Lost and Found”, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, Germany (2007); “Point of Purchase”, DUMBO Arts Center, NYC (2006).
Taryn Simon directs our attention to familiar systems of organization—bloodlines, criminal investigations, flower arrangements—making visible the contours of power and authority hidden within. Incorporating mediums ranging from photography and sculpture to text, sound, and performance, each of her projects is shaped by years of research and planning, including obtaining access from institutions as varied as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Playboy Enterprises, Inc.
Simon’s work has been exhibited with Artangel in Islington, London (2018); and at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Massachusetts (2018–2019); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark (2016–2017); Park Avenue Armory, New York (2016); the Albertinum, Dresden (2016); Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2016); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2016); Jeu de Paume, Paris (2015); Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012); Tate Modern, London (2011); Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin (2011); and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007). Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Centre Pompidou, Kunstmuseum Lucerne, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and was included in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Simon’s honors include the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography and a Photo London Master of Photography award.
Liam Young is a speculative architect who operates in the spaces between design, fiction and futures. He is cofounder of Tomorrows Thoughts Today, an urban futures think tank, exploring the local and global implications of new technologies and Unknown Fields, a nomadic research studio that travels on expeditions to chronicle these emerging conditions as they occur on the ground. He has been acclaimed in both mainstream and architectural media, including the BBC, NBC, Wired, Guardian, Time, and Dazed and Confused, is a BAFTA nominated producer and his work has been collected by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum and MAAS in Sydney. He has taught internationally at the Architectural Association, Princeton University and now runs the ground breaking MA in Fiction and Entertainment at Sci Arc in Los Angles. Liam's narrative approach sits between documentary and fiction as he focuses on projects that aim to reveal the invisible connections and systems that make the modern world work. Liam now manages his time between exploring distant landscapes and prototyping the future worlds he extrapolates from them.