Situated Testimony: Forensic Architecture’s Memory Objects

Abstract

“Forensic Architecture” describes both the research agency, founded in 2011, as well as its investigative method and aesthetic practice. As an emerging discipline, forensic architecture exploits the relation between space, material, and memory. My aim in this article is to consider how the agency’s “memory objects”—aestheticized virtual renderings of their investigations—operate as testimonial objects, evidentiary archives, and simulated sites of conscience. I attend to one “memory object” in particular, a film titled “Drone Strike Investigation Case no. 2: Mir Ali, North Waziristan, 4 October 2010; The Architecture of Memory,” an investigation which the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights commissioned Forensic Architecture to undertake. This article suggests that this virtual “memory object” troubles the status of both the human witness and the physical landscape to which it refers.