Eyal Weizman: Forensic Architecture, Notes from Fields and Forums

This notebook is a philosophical and cultural-critical examination of Israel's policy of occupation. The architect Eyal Weizman uses the term "forensic," derived from the Latin forensis, "forum," to reconstruct the history of attacks on and violations of buildings. Drawing from the fields of judicial medicine and psychiatry, "Forensic Architecture" serves in revisiting damaged Palestinian houses and ruins. Weizman, who is a member of the collective Decolonizing Architecture, founded in...
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This notebook is a philosophical and cultural-critical examination of Israel's policy of occupation. The architect Eyal Weizman uses the term "forensic," derived from the Latin forensis, "forum," to reconstruct the history of attacks on and violations of buildings. Drawing from the fields of judicial medicine and psychiatry, "Forensic Architecture" serves in revisiting damaged Palestinian houses and ruins. Weizman, who is a member of the collective Decolonizing Architecture, founded in 2007, describes Forensic Architecture as "the archaeology of the very recent past" and "a form of assembling for the future." Forensic Aesthetics mirror relationships and logics of action, objective and subjective probabilities; what is needed is an interpreter who addresses the public in the name of a destroyed home. Eyal Weizman (*1970) is an architect based in London; he runs "Forensic Architecture," a European Research Council project, at Goldsmiths, University of London.