(re)programming: Accountability

How to tell With Eyal Weizman

Truth is hardly making it under an information ecosystem defined by speed, exploitation, opacity and inequality. But journalism is not in danger, it is just happening somewhere else. Eyal Weizman founded Forensic Architecture to test a methodology for analyzing the occupation of Gaza as a crime scene, using buildings as witnesses, satellite data as evidence and models and artificial intelligence as tools for the testing and verification of new hypotheses. This exercise of counter-forensics has been replicated and improved over the years to provide new evidence against official narratives in international human rights courts. It also prompted a new genre of journalistic procedurals and a community of practice that, under the moniker Investigative Commons, seeks to confront the disinformation machine of “counter-factual” neo-fascist groups by socializing the development and deployment of “counter-forensic” evidence. Initiated by Forensic Architecture, FORENSIS and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Investigative Commons includes documentary superstar Laura Poitras/Praxis Films, Bellingcat, Mnemonic and HKW, among others.