A gloomy torture prison in Syria, an inconspicuous internet café in Kassel and a private house in Pakistan that has been shot up.

The "Witnesses" exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, leads to three very different, widely separated locations, which are shown in detail - as part of an exhibition on the work of Forensic Architecture from London.

The research office recreates various crime scenes as a model and/or as a data model in order to examine the "spatial conditions that influence the assessment of the events there", as the architects call it.

The British group is not a conventional design office, but uses architectural means to investigate “human rights violations and violence committed by states, police forces, the military or companies”, according to their own statement.

An exhibition is currently on view at the Frankfurter Kunstverein in which forensic architecture is attempting to reconstruct the terrorist attack in Hanau in February 2020.

For their exhibition in Humlebæk, they faithfully recreated two crime scenes at a scale of 1:1: the internet café in Kassel, where the neo-Nazis shot the owner of the shop twice in the head, and a residential building that was hit by an American drone in Pakistan was carried out, resulting in the deaths of four people.

"Since 2004, American drones have killed thousands of civilians in the area," the architects claim in the exhibition.

They meticulously mapped the drone attack and documented the deaths of the – presumably innocent – ​​residents.

In order for the visitor to accurately assess the validity of this thesis, however, more information about the context than the exhibition offers would be required.

"Collateral damage" in wars seems as inevitable as it is unacceptable.

Quickly suggestive

The internet café in Kassel, where Halit Yozgat was shot by the so-called NSU, was also reconstructed in full size.

The story behind it is particularly frightening because an employee of the Hessian Office for the Protection of the Constitution was in the café at the time of the crime, but claims to this day that he did not see the murder.

The architects meticulously recreated the café rooms in order to be able to reproduce the testimonies.

The spatial evidence that speaks against the state agent's testimony is overwhelming.

This "New Kind of Court" that Forensic Architecture creates with its methods is as enlightening as it is questionable.

The team of artists, software developers, journalists, lawyers and animators, led by architect Eyal Weizman, is highly skilled and intelligent, as the exhibition demonstrates - their architectural tools to perform spatial analysis of criminal incidents are unique in the world.

But their approach of “conducting investigations on behalf of people affected by political conflict, police brutality, border patrols, or environmental violence” can come across as arrogant and even overbearing.

Because when the three-dimensional reconstructions document spaces and events by "giving materials and people a voice and translating them into evidence of crimes",

A question becomes political

Forensic Architecture illuminates events based on location.

The exhibition describes "reading changes" even on bricks or the leaves of a tree.

“Any material can bear witness,” says Weizman.

His office uses data that makes it easier for witnesses who have experienced traumatic events to remember.

The room in a torture cell in a Syrian prison, for example, is reconstructed in such a way that the events in the model can be precisely reproduced.

Such examination and presentation of testimony reveals how the event was perceived.

It equates perception with truth.

Forensic Architecture is creating a whole new kind of architectural activism, which has become popular in recent years, "by combining architecture, law and journalism" to protect human rights and the environment worldwide - a Herculean task.

Its political implications are potentially onerous.

Turning "forensics into aesthetics," as the bureau calls it, may even imply the danger of fetishizing violence.

So far, Forensic has resisted this temptation.

When used correctly, her “pictorial spaces” can even alleviate trauma and help to clarify crimes and injustice, as examples from Israel, Colombia and Lebanon show.

Their expertise in visualizing sounds and gases is breathtaking and arguably far exceeds the capabilities and resources of the police force in many countries.

In addition, the question of which incidents are examined forensically and architecturally and which are not, becomes highly political.

The disturbing exhibition was designed by Luise Hooge Lorenc so impressively that it draws visitors into the innocent rooms of Denmark's most beautiful art museum under its dark spell.

"Forensic Architecture - Witnesses"

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At the Louisiana Museum through October 23.