Forensic Architecture By re-thinking the meaning of information, evidence, testimony and artistic practices associated with acts of resistance, artists have moved in unexpected directions

This post is about political resistance through artistic practice. It is about how artists and others, even in times of the most extreme acts of shattering violence perpetrated by powerful forces and militaries, use their practice to act as witnesses and as activists, often in coalition with lawyers and journalists. Together they insist that things can be different, that we can and must refuse to accept that genocide is permissible, and that repercussions for acts of utter, illegal inhumanity must be accounted for in international courts of justice.

Recently in Life and Fate I wrote about Soviet Russian writer Vasily Grossman’s hybridity as a novelist-journalist. His work transgressed the 1940’s categories of investigative journalism, witness statements, and testimony. His essay Hell of Treblinka 1 was passed from hand to hand during the Nuremberg Trial of Nazis in 1945/6. His document Black Book of Soviet Jewry ,a compendium of crimes committed against Jews by Nazis on Soviet Soil co-written with Ilya Ehrenburg, was banned and the printing plates destroyed by Soviet authorities. Many of his colleagues and collaborators were murdered by Stalin’s regime. His commitment to telling the truth through his art, about the Ukrainian genocidal famine and other Stalinist crimes, came at considerable risk to him and those around him.

Artists have never ceased to work in the footsteps of Grossman using their art as witness, as a testament for those without a voice, those who will never appear in a war-crimes court to face their tormentors. Over recent decades groups of journalists and artists including architects, writers and film-makers, have re-conceptualised their work, extending methodologies in order to speak up for the defenceless and help prosecute perpetrators using all the aesthetic, scientific and forensic tools at their disposal. And I intend to continue to discuss their work and impact by bringing them to your attention here in Clickbait Citizen.

For the complete text, visit Chris Baldwin's #ClickbaitCitizen on Substack.