Counter Forensics in Palestine and the Treachery of Images
A presentation and screening with Shourideh Molavi
Content warning: this event includes accounts of massacre and violence.
This inaugural talk by Shourideh Molavi, lead researcher on Palestine for Forensic Architecture, is one of three public gatherings imagined as dedicated moments to engage with Shourideh on her work in Palestine and Gaza. Featuring a screening of the Forensic Architecture investigation “The Massacre at Tur al-Zagh: Al Dawayima, 29 October 1948“, (27’14), which reconstructs the erased Palestinian village through memory sketches, aerial photography, and survivor testimony.
The Palestinian farming village of al-Dawayima, one of the largest in the Hebron district, was invaded on 29 October 1948 by the Israeli army’s 89th Battalion. The village had no regular armed forces and was ethnically cleansed in full that day.
Through memory sketches, aerial photography, and survivor testimony, the project reconstructs the erased Palestinian village and identifies, for the first time, the likely site of the largest massacre: the cave of Tur al-Zagh.
Molavi’s talk situates this work within the broader practice of counter forensics, examining how reconstruction and mapping techniques developed by Forensic Architecture function as tools of evidence in unearthing histories of violence that have been forcibly hidden from both personal and collective memory.
“The Massacre at Tur al-Zagh: Al Dawayima, 29 October 1948″ investigation by Forensic Architecture was made in collaboration with Palestine Land Society and the al-Dawayima Cultural Association.
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Forensic Architecture (FA) emerged as a critical practice dedicated to challenging settler-colonial violence in Palestine with locally situated counter-investigations. Its work has expanded globally to offer groundbreaking investigations into state, corporate, and colonial crimes. FA works in partnership with grassroots activists and legal teams, international NGOs, and media organisations and has contributed to some of the landmark cases of our time.
Forensic Architecture is also credited with the creation of a new eponymous form of interdisciplinary investigative practice. The group uses architecture as an optical device to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction, by cross-referencing a variety of evidentiary sources and methods, including situated witness testimony, new media, remote sensing, material analysis, and crowdsourcing.