Art investigation: Forensic Architecture

The research collective Forensic Architecture has been nominated for the Turner Prize, coming after numerous plaudits for the group’s recent exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and presentations at Documenta in Athens and Kassel last year. Emphatically and unambiguously siding with the oppressed, the collective has been hired by international prosecution teams, NGOs and political organisations for its meticulous empirical reconstruction of neo-imperial injustice meted out in the Middle East and elsewhere. While the political impact of Forensic Architecture’s investigations is often frustrated by the limits of the frameworks in which it operates, the group’s tireless efforts to lend voice to the voiceless in a legally persuasive way is vital.

In the face of the undeniable political urgency of this research, it may seem irrelevant or even reactionary to question whether the work of Forensic Architecture should be considered art. While this question was hotly debated in reference to Assemble, the architecture collective and (arguably) covert gentrifiers that won the 2015 Turner Prize, it might be claimed that all that matters is that Forensic Architecture will be receiving increased exposure. However, without detracting from its political importance, Forensic Architecture’s protest against dominant powers is qualitatively different from the protest against dominant powers of which art is capable. Moreover, the success of Forensic Architecture in the art world is symptomatic of a broader demotion of art’s own capacity for political opposition in favour of art as a conduit for often paraphraseable political content.