Abstract

GROUND TRUTH : Testimonies of dispossession, destruction, and return in the Naqab/Negev Ariel Caine, Artist at Goldsmiths University Forensic Architecture

Over the last decade, 3D scanning and spatial imaging technologies have been rapidly permeating the fields of archaeology, architecture & civil engineering as well as military. While restructuring these fields from the inside they simultaneously open up new spaces for civic-led counter practices. In this talk I wish to consider some of the ways in which together with practitioners, researchers and activists I have been repurposing such imaging tools, bringing together computational, spatial and DIY ground and aerial photography to offer a form of imaging practice that is collective and architectural, producing spatial testimony, documenting and exposing the spatial evidence for systemic rights abuse under conditions of visual and political violence.

During the talk we will unpack two projects, in the Naqab desert (Israel/Palestine) the project Ground Truth seeks alongside local Bedouin families to use spatial imaging and mapping to produce evidence of their continuity of presence and support land rights claims. In Iraq’s Sinjar region, together with the NGO Yazda, we have been using ground and aerial imaging to document and reconstruct traces of the Yazidi genocide by Isis, ongoing since August 2014.