Ariel Caine (Goldsmiths University, Forensic Architecture)
Over the last decade, 3D scanning and spatial imaging technologies have been rapidly permeating the fields of archaeology, architecture & civil engineering as well as military. While restructuring these fields from the inside they simultaneously open up new spaces for civic led counter practices. In this talk I consider some of the ways in which together with practitioners, researchers and activists I have been repurposing such imaging tools, bringing together computational, spatial and DIY ground and aerial photography to offer a form of imaging practice that is collective and architectural, producing spatial testimony, documenting and exposing the spatial evidence for systemic rights abuse under conditions of visual and political violence.
The talk will unpack two projects. In the Naqab desert (Israel/Palestine), the project Ground Truth seeks alongside local Bedouin families to use spatial imaging and mapping to produce evidence of their continuity of presence and support land rights claims. In Iraq’s Sinjar region, together with the NGO Yazda, we have been using ground and aerial imaging to document and reconstruct traces of the Yazidi genocide by Isis, ongoing since August 2014.
About Ariel:
Ariel Caine is a Jerusalem-born and London based artist. He is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London and a researcher and project coordinator at the Forensic Architecture research agency. He holds a BFA and MFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Israel.
Ariel’s practice focuses on the intersection between spatial (three-dimensional) photography, modelling and survey technologies and their operation within the production of cultural memory and national narratives. A central component of his work in recent years is the construction of a collaborative work practice of photography as an act of aesthetic-political resistance on behalf of civil society. Among his latest exhibitions are, ‘Ground Truth’ (as part of Forensic Architecture) al-Araqib (Israel), Binyamin Gallery (Israel), Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Denmark), The Italian Academy: Columbia University (US), Tate Britain (as part of Forensic Architecture’s Turner Prize Nomination).
About the City Seminar:
The City Seminar Series this year, co-hosted by the Department of Geography and the Department of Architecture, will convene around the theme ‘Infrastructures of Memory’. The intention of this series is to explore a variety of techniques, technologies, rituals, performances and materialities of memory and remembrance, and how they may reinforce or subvert prevailing power relations.