GENOCIDAL INTENT
- Introduction
- Origins of Forensic Architecture: Emergent Countercartography of Palestine
- Between Humanism and Science: Testimonies Reconsidered
- Displacing Law: Socialized Evidence Production
- “A Cartography of Genocide”: Medics as New Witnesses
- Patterns: Facts on the Ground and Guilty Minds
- Genocidal Resonances: Guatemala and Namibia
- "Conditions of life" : Calculus as a Mode of Control
- Lebensraum: Deployment of the Zionist Project
- Continous Nabka : failed depolitization and protacted eradication
- Reception since October 2023: Escalation of the Pushback
- Genocidal Intent - full version
Introduction
Prolog
Published in October 2024 by the Forensic Architecture agency, the report entitled “A Cartography of Genocide” seeks to establish the nature of the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip over the previous year. The more than 800-page document is accompanied by an interactive mapping platform built from the collection and interpretation of a vast number of photos, videos and satellite images. It aims to demonstrate that the acts of violence inflicted on the people of Gaza and their environment are part of a genocidal project. The report supports the complaint against Israel filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in December 2023, as well as the advocacy of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.
Forensic Architecture is both the name of the group of researchers behind the “Cartography of a Genocide” and of the discipline they helped to create. Founded in London in 2010 and based at Goldsmiths, University of London, the collective brings together architects, videographers, computer scientists, lawyers and journalists. Their investigative and multimodal modeling work has revolutionized human rights activism by making use of architectural techniques. It consists of reconstructing and exposing crimes committed by states by turning against them the forensic tools that they are usually the only ones to use.
Conducted at the request of local communities or in partnership with human rights organizations, Forensic Architecture's investigations are almost as numerous as the conflicts that are tearing the planet apart. They have focused on drone attacks illegally carried out by the US army, on the bombing of hospitals by Russian and Israeli air forces, on police violence in Turkey, Mexico, Colombia and the United Kingdom, on environmental crimes committed in Indonesia and Greece, on the involvement of European authorities in the disappearance of migrants in the Mediterranean, and on the German secret service's connections with far-right terrorists.
Eyal Weizman, an Israeli-British architect and professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, is the founder and director of Forensic Architecture. Before discussing the production and reception of “Cartography of a Genocide”, we started by asking him to recount the origins, discuss the methodology and explain the evolution of Forensic Architecture, both the agency and the discipline, as well as to retrace the longstanding involvement of the collective with the Palestinian cause.
To establish the genocidal nature of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza since October 2023, Eyal Weizman and his colleagues have drawn on the text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and in particular on the clause that qualifies as genocidal the fact of “imposing on (a) group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. For this is indeed the intention revealed by the massacres and forced displacement of civilians, by the systematic destruction of Gaza’s buildings, infrastructures and agricultural land, but also by Israel’s deliberate efforts to erase Gaza’s culture.
Beyond the report itself and what it says about Israel’s intent and goals, we asked Eyal Weizman about his current research on the long history of Gaza and the place that this region of Palestine occupies in the deployment and transformations of the Zionist project. He also evoked the troubling similarities between the fate of the people of Gaza and two other military campaigns that Forensic Architecturehas been commissioned to investigate. One is the genocide perpetrated by the German colonial army against the Nama and the Ovaherero of Namibia at the turn of the 20th century; the other involves the attempt to exterminate the Ixil Maya of Guatemala under the dictatorships of Generals Rios Montt and Luis Garcia between 1976 and 1984.
Our conversation with Eyal Weizman ended with a discussion of the near future, as suggested by the Trump administration's assumption of power, the criminalization of support for Palestine throughout the Global North, and the growing risks to which populations affected by state violence are exposed when they disseminate information about what happens to them.
Our interview took place in Paris on January 26, 2025.
Prolog
Published in October 2024 by the Forensic Architecture agency, the report entitled “A Cartography of Genocide” seeks to establish the nature of the Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip over the previous year. The more than 800-page document is accompanied by an interactive mapping platform built from the collection and interpretation of a vast number of photos, videos and satellite images. It aims to demonstrate that the acts of violence inflicted on the people of Gaza and their environment are part of a genocidal project. The report supports the complaint against Israel filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in December 2023, as well as the advocacy of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories.
Forensic Architecture is both the name of the group of researchers behind the “Cartography of a Genocide” and of the discipline they helped to create. Founded in London in 2010 and based at Goldsmiths, University of London, the collective brings together architects, videographers, computer scientists, lawyers and journalists. Their investigative and multimodal modeling work has revolutionized human rights activism by making use of architectural techniques. It consists of reconstructing and exposing crimes committed by states by turning against them the forensic tools that they are usually the only ones to use.
Conducted at the request of local communities or in partnership with human rights organizations, Forensic Architecture's investigations are almost as numerous as the conflicts that are tearing the planet apart. They have focused on drone attacks illegally carried out by the US army, on the bombing of hospitals by Russian and Israeli air forces, on police violence in Turkey, Mexico, Colombia and the United Kingdom, on environmental crimes committed in Indonesia and Greece, on the involvement of European authorities in the disappearance of migrants in the Mediterranean, and on the German secret service's connections with far-right terrorists.
Eyal Weizman, an Israeli-British architect and professor at Goldsmiths, University of London, is the founder and director of Forensic Architecture. Before discussing the production and reception of “Cartography of a Genocide”, we started by asking him to recount the origins, discuss the methodology and explain the evolution of Forensic Architecture, both the agency and the discipline, as well as to retrace the longstanding involvement of the collective with the Palestinian cause.
To establish the genocidal nature of the Israeli government's actions in Gaza since October 2023, Eyal Weizman and his colleagues have drawn on the text of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and in particular on the clause that qualifies as genocidal the fact of “imposing on (a) group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. For this is indeed the intention revealed by the massacres and forced displacement of civilians, by the systematic destruction of Gaza’s buildings, infrastructures and agricultural land, but also by Israel’s deliberate efforts to erase Gaza’s culture.
Beyond the report itself and what it says about Israel’s intent and goals, we asked Eyal Weizman about his current research on the long history of Gaza and the place that this region of Palestine occupies in the deployment and transformations of the Zionist project. He also evoked the troubling similarities between the fate of the people of Gaza and two other military campaigns that Forensic Architecturehas been commissioned to investigate. One is the genocide perpetrated by the German colonial army against the Nama and the Ovaherero of Namibia at the turn of the 20th century; the other involves the attempt to exterminate the Ixil Maya of Guatemala under the dictatorships of Generals Rios Montt and Luis Garcia between 1976 and 1984.
Our conversation with Eyal Weizman ended with a discussion of the near future, as suggested by the Trump administration's assumption of power, the criminalization of support for Palestine throughout the Global North, and the growing risks to which populations affected by state violence are exposed when they disseminate information about what happens to them.
Our interview took place in Paris on January 26, 2025.
Biography of Eyal WEIZMAN
Eyal Weizman is the Founder and Director of Forensic Architecture and professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where in 2005 he founded the Centre for Research Architecture. In 2007, with Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, he established the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine.
In 2019, he was elected life fellow of the British Academy. In 2020, he received an MBE for ‘services to architecture’. He was the recipient of the London Design Award (2021) and the Mark Cousins Theory Award (2024). Forensic Architecture is the recipient of The Right Livelihood Award, a Peabody Award for interactive media, the European Cultural Foundation Award for Culture, and the RIBA Charles Jencks Award.
Eyal graduated with a degree in architecture from the Architectural Association in 1998, and received his PhD in 2006 from the London Consortium at Birkbeck, University of London.
He is the author of the following books:
A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture,with Rafi Segal and David Tartakover, London: Verso, 2003.
Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, London: Verso, 2007.
The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza, London: Verso, 2011.
Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of Forensic Aesthetics, with Thomas Keenan, Berlin: Sternberg Press/Portikus, 2012.
Architecture After Revolution, with Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013.
Before and After, with Ines Weizman, London/Moscow: Strelka Press, 2014.
FORENSIS, with Forensic Architecture, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014.
The Roundabout Revolutions, with Blake Fisher and Samaneh Moafi, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2015.
The Conflict Shoreline: Colonization as Climate Change in the Negev Desert, with photography by Fazal Sheikh, Göttingen: Steidl and Cabinet Books, 2015
Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability, New York: MIT Press/Zone Books, 2017.
Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth, with Matthew Fuller, London: Verso, 2021.
The Police Shooting of Mark Duggan: Forensic Architecture Reports #1, New York: Cabinet books and London: ICA books, 2021.
Biography of Eyal WEIZMAN
Eyal Weizman is the Founder and Director of Forensic Architecture and professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where in 2005 he founded the Centre for Research Architecture. In 2007, with Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, he established the architectural collective DAAR in Beit Sahour/Palestine.
In 2019, he was elected life fellow of the British Academy. In 2020, he received an MBE for ‘services to architecture’. He was the recipient of the London Design Award (2021) and the Mark Cousins Theory Award (2024). Forensic Architecture is the recipient of The Right Livelihood Award, a Peabody Award for interactive media, the European Cultural Foundation Award for Culture, and the RIBA Charles Jencks Award.
Eyal graduated with a degree in architecture from the Architectural Association in 1998, and received his PhD in 2006 from the London Consortium at Birkbeck, University of London.
He is the author of the following books:
A Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture,with Rafi Segal and David Tartakover, London: Verso, 2003.
Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, London: Verso, 2007.
The Least of All Possible Evils: Humanitarian Violence from Arendt to Gaza, London: Verso, 2011.
Mengele’s Skull: The Advent of Forensic Aesthetics, with Thomas Keenan, Berlin: Sternberg Press/Portikus, 2012.
Architecture After Revolution, with Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013.
Before and After, with Ines Weizman, London/Moscow: Strelka Press, 2014.
FORENSIS, with Forensic Architecture, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014.
The Roundabout Revolutions, with Blake Fisher and Samaneh Moafi, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2015.
The Conflict Shoreline: Colonization as Climate Change in the Negev Desert, with photography by Fazal Sheikh, Göttingen: Steidl and Cabinet Books, 2015
Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability, New York: MIT Press/Zone Books, 2017.
Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth, with Matthew Fuller, London: Verso, 2021.
The Police Shooting of Mark Duggan: Forensic Architecture Reports #1, New York: Cabinet books and London: ICA books, 2021.