Forensic Architecture

Date :

© Ariel Caine

Destruction of Yazidi Cultural Heritage

Dates

5 September – 29 November 2020: Exhibition
Opening Hours:
September-October: Tue-Sat 2 - 7pm, Sun+holidays 10 am - 7 pm
November: Tue-Sat 2 - 6pm, Sun+holidays 10 am - 7 pm
School classes and groups may visit the exhibition outside the opening times after making an appointment.
The exhibition spaces and Café Botanika are wheelchair accessible. The exhibition and accompanying programs are admission free.

4 September, Friday 7 pm: Exhibition Opening
Shuttle taxi from Freising station: 6:55 pm; return: 8:45 pm

• Greetings: Josef Mederer, president of the District Council
• Introduction: Björn Vedder, art scholar and philosopher

10 September, Thrusday 7 pm: [OUTPUT] 017
online live stream only
Artist talk with Ariel Caine, Researcher & Project Coordinator, Forensic Architecture
In conversation with: Björn Vedder
Moderator: Eike Berg, director of the Center for Art

17 November, Thursday 4 pm: meet up+art
Guided tour of the exhibition with Alexandra M. Hoffmann

Forensic Architecture

Forensic Architecture is an independent art and research group founded in 2011 under the direction of Eyal Weizman and based at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. Since its inception in 2011, the think tank has developed the concept of counter forensics, employing it against what it believes to be governmental disinformation and using it increasingly to investigate human rights violations and state violence. Here, images, videos and other information are painstakingly compiled so that locations and time are simulated and visualized. Forensic Architecture’s projects have been presented at numerous large-scale exhibitions around the world, including documenta 14 in Kassel.

Destruction of Yazidi Cultural Heritage

The Sinjar region in northern Iraq forms one of the two core territories of the Yezidi, a religious and cultural minority that has long been oppressed in Iraq and Syria. In August 2014 the region was invaded by troops of the so-called Islamic State (IS). Yezidi villages and towns were seized and razed and their inhabitants massacred. Religious buildings and sites of Yezidi cultural heritage were delibe rately destroyed. The IS was expelled from the region in 2015, but many of the Yezidis who escaped still live in refugee camps in Iraq and Syria. They are traumatized and hesitant to return.

Exhibition

Forensic Architecture, working in colla-boration with Yazda, an inter national Yezidi NGO, began training researchers in digital land surveying, mapping and documentation techniques to aid in investigations of the genocide. Part of the work included digitally recon-structing destroyed historical Yazidi temples in Iraq. This project and resulting documentation have been developed and reworked artistically. Videos, 3D prints and simulations are used to show how history and events can be researched and reconstructed using digital technology.