Michael Reynold Zalta
Forensic Architecture
London, England, UK
I have now completed my third week at Forensic Architecture (FA) and I’m consistently amazed by how dynamic every single day in the office is and by how much I am learning. For the most part I am still working on FA’s investigation into the Yazidi Genocide. However, as the Yazidi project continues to progress and evolve, I am learning so much both about the techniques and emergent methods FA uses to investigate and evidence human rights abuses as well as the implications of such investigations.
Our investigation into the Yazidi genocide, like much of FA’s work, is based upon visualizing or reconstructing the material remains of sites of violence. The process of reconstructing the ruins and digitally mapping the sites and events of the Yazidi Genocide is important, not because the story of the genocide is unknown, but because the material remains of destroyed temple sites, schools, community gathering centers, etc., represent a critical component of the claim we are trying to make for the Yazidi genocide–that the attacks and ensuing genocide is a systematic offensive intended to eradicate a people through murder, sexual enslavement, and the destruction very spaces within which the Yazidi people exist.
When one reads the definition of genocide according to Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), it is clear that “genocide” is defined by attacks on the body and the psyche, not necessarily on the environment, cultural heritage sites, sites of worship, etc. I am interested in exploring how the project perhaps expands the definition of genocide by shedding light on how the significance cultural heritage and the lived environment structures a “people.”
Before I joined the team, the project leaders led a workshop with members of Yazda, the human rights organization dedicated to justice for the Yazidi Genocide, and trained survivors of the genocide in low-cost, low-tech methods of photographic surveying. By teaching local communities how to take aerial photographs by attaching cameras to kites or balloons, and introducing them to photogrammetry software (software which allows you to easily create 3D scalable models of objects out of overlapping photos), FA effectually is equipping the oppressed with tools to document their own oppression. This is not only important for many of the reasons Augusto Boal laid out in his text, “Poetics of the Oppressed,” in which he discusses the mental, subjective, and political significance of providing the means of production to those without the vocabulary/tools to speak for themselves, but it is also important as no official body has yet investigated the sites around the Sinjar Mountain Region which have begun to erode and to be repurposed by trespassers.
Now I am working on scripting and rough-cutting a short documentary-style film which explains FA’s community-based documentation methodology, “Community Satellites.” I have been improving my video editing skills and even learned the science of photogrammetry.
I am excited that a lot of the questions I have been having about the implications of the project are slowly becoming easier for me to answer and are in fact enriching my understanding about the body, space, and evidence of human rights abuse. I look forward to continuing being challenged, to continuing fine-tuning my technical skills, and most importantly, to continuing learning about the progress of human rights practice in a world where so many advanced digital tools are at our disposal.
References:
Boal, Augusto. Theatre of the Oppressed. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1985. Print.
UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 78, p. 277, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3ac0.html [accessed 17 July 2018]