Michael Reynold Zalta
Forensic Architecture
London, England
My name is Michael Zalta and I am a rising senior at Gallatin creating a concentration that explores the intersections between dramatic writing, media theory, Middle Eastern studies, and human rights. In my interdisciplinary approach to playwriting and to analysis of Middle Eastern representation, I am particularly interested in the relationship between visuality and narrative: the stories of suffering that are inscribed within images, the abuses that exist beyond the frame of the camera, and the systems of inequality that require new lenses or new frameworks to truly be “seen.”
I am incredibly grateful to have been named a 2018 Gallatin Global Human Rights Fellow and to be working with Eyal Weizman, one of the most prolific scholars/writers/architects in the fields of human rights and media theory, as an intern/research assistant with his renowned project and research lab, Forensic Architecture (which, by the way, was just shortlisted for the 2018 Turner Prize!)
What most excites me about Forensic Architecture is its innovative approach to seeing and telling stories of structural abuse and injustice by using new media to create comprehensive cases evidencing the invisible violence that materializes at various rights frontiers. Their modes of representation call attention to the physical structures that perpetuate abuses, the emergent instruments of warfare, and the way in which visuality works both as a violent force but also a force that can be re-signified to expose the inter-workings of systemic abuse.
In the context of war, human rights practice is so often concerned with the act of witnessing: seeing the “most visible” suffering in the most readily available places for intervention. The efficacy of human rights practice, in that sense, is circumscribed, limited to working toward the amelioration of human suffering. Consequentially, the goals of ensuring the equal “right to life” to all humans or ensuring “the right to freedom from the structural violence of global inequality and from the ravages of war” is often set aside.1
However, Forensic Architecture does create projects that viewers merely witness. Their work isn’t centered around viewing the suffering of the human body, doesn’t attribute a particularly problematic currency to one’s trauma. Nor does it create a platform for testimonies of victims to be contested, negated, or instrumentalized. Rather, their work tirelessly asks viewers to see global inequality in its daunting totality and restates that the dream for global equality is limitless.
I am beyond excited to lend a hand in working toward this dream in just a few weeks, and I look forward to checking in again with more information about the project to which I will be assigned. Thanks for reading 🙂
Michael
1Abu‐Lughod, Lila. “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.” American Anthropologist, Wiley/Blackwell (10.1111), 7 Jan. 2008, anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1525/aa.2002.104.3.783.