Short Course in Forensic Architecture: Operative Models

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As part of the exhibition Counter Investigations, Forensic Architecture leads five seminars organized around key concepts that underpin the agency's work, adding up to a short course in forensic architecture. These seminars take place in the ICA gallery spaces, within and around the investigations on display. Whereas these investigations were produced for presentation in juridical and political forums, the seminars gather an alternative forum in which the same evidence is interrogated theoretically and historically

Special multibuy offer
All five Forensic Architecture Short courses for £20/£18 concessions/£12 ICA Members

All are welcome to join these seminars, but we encourage people to attend all or a number of sessions where possible. Space is limited, so please register early  

This seminar on operative models takes Forensic Architecture's use of models—theoretical, computational and architectural—as an opportunity to interrogate the practice of modelling itself. Operative models are simultaneously material constructs and thought experiments, necessary to test, simulate, predict and present the ways in which particular incidents or larger-scale patterns of movement or interaction have unfolded, or could unfold in the future. What are the multiple relations between models and their depicted realities? Do some models operate beyond their descriptive power, and influence the reality that they are purportedly merely designed to represent or predict? How does this form of representation shift from the analytical to the operative? How are models activated to gain agency in different forums? 

Members of Forensic Architecture will introduce the concept of operative models, in relation to the investigations including the The Killing in Umm al-Hiran, The Murder of Halit Yozgat and Destruction and Return in al-Araqib. 

Invited participants—including legal scholar Brenna Bhandar, cultural theorist Matt Fuller, environmental researcher and practitioner Jennifer Gabrys and architect and urbanist John Palmesino—will respond to and offer insights on the investigations and the concepts raised. 

Following the seminar members of Forensic Architecture lead a practice-based workshop on forensic modelling, covering techniques such as reenactment, photogrammetry, real-scale simulation and remote sensing.  

Image caption: On 18 January 2017 in the village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev Desert, a Bedouin villager Yaqub Musa Abu al-Qi’an and  an Israeli Policeman Erez Levi were killed, with Abu al-Qi’an accused of having intentionally driven his Toyota Land Cruiser into Levi in a ‘terror attack’. This image shows the use of photogrammetry and 3D modelling to reconstruct the scene in order to track the movement of the car and location of policemen, and to calculate the terrain slope, speed, and distances at each moment of the event. Forensic Architecture, 2018

The Short Course in Forensic Architecture is organised in partnership with the MA Studio in Forensic Architecture, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, led by Susan Schuppli and Lorenzo Pezzani. The practice-based workshops are organised by Christina Varvia