Events

In conjunction with the forthcoming special issue of World Records, Just Evidence (August, 2025), this conversation brings together scholars and practitioners contributing to the special issue from the fields of Cinema Studies, Cultural Studies, Political Theory, and Geography, to highlight particular cases and contexts in which targeted populations have located mechanisms of harm reductions within forensic authority, and through counterforensic practices.

The issue interrogates how counterforensic practices offer provisional forms of protection that challenge and/or uphold the systems producing vulnerability, and it investigates strategies employed by artists and activists to navigate these double-binds.

Particular areas of focus include the forensic architecture investigation unit of Al-Haq, the oldest human rights organization in Palestine, the rise of the victims’ rights movement, and the cinematic practices of Languid Hands, Philip Scheffner, and Maxime Jean-Baptiste.

This event will take place at Goldsmiths in the RHB Cinema (Ground Floor, Richard Hoggart Building). It will feature a short introduction to the Just Evidence special issue by the editors, followed by reflections on three of its essays (see below) by Goldsmiths interlocutors. The majority of time will be reserved for free-flowing discussion and debate.

Previews of the following three essays will be shared with registered participants ahead of the discussion:

They Are Shooting at Our Shadows The Al-Haq Forensic Architecture Investigative Unit and Rachel Nelson (Visualizing Abolition)

Laliv Melamed and Pooja Rangan

Countering Forensic Violence: Philip Scheffner’s Revision

Başak Ertür and Alisa Lebow

Tongueless Whispers and Recited Choreographies: Black Memory as Counterforensics

Yasmina Price

WORLD RECORDS PARTICIPANTS

Sasha Crawford-Holland (Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Arts, Vanderbilt University)

Başak Ertür (Reader at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University)

Alisa Lebow (Professor of Screen Media, University of Sussex)

Yasmina Price (PhD Candidate in Film and Media and African American Studies, Yale University)

Pooja Rangan (Professor of English in Film and Media Studies, Amherst College)

Patrick Smith (Assistant Professor of Arts, Media and Creative Technology, University of Salford)

Tickets here.