Founded in 2021 in Berlin as a non-governmental, not-for-profit association (e.V.), Forensis works for and in collaboration with individuals and communities affected by state and corporate violence, to support their demands for justice, reparations, and accountability.

Drawing on techniques and methodologies developed at the Goldsmiths, University of London-based Forensic Architecture (FA), and the groundbreaking exhibition FORENSIS (HKW Berlin, 2014), we are an interdisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in spatial and visual investigation, time-based 3D reconstruction, cartographic platforms, and open source investigation. We produce evidence for presentation in national and international courts, human rights forums, parliamentary inquiries, truth commissions and people’s tribunals.

Our work focuses on building case files for exacting accountability for human rights violations including police brutality, systemic racism and antisemitism, border regimes, surveillance, environmental destruction, and is aimed at supporting reparation claims for colonial crimes.

Our investigations commonly begin with a discrete incident or site and build outwards to analyse and expose broader structural, environmental, and historical forms of violence.

We use a range of techniques and technologies to develop mixed-media case files and forensic reports, which may include longform videos, expert reports, interactive web platforms, digital and physical architectural models, or immersive environments.

Those case files may be deployed in ‘traditional’ forums of accountability, in national and international courts, human rights forums, parliamentary inquiries, truth commissions and people’s tribunals. Our evidence is also frequently featured in the news media, or in arts and cultural institutions, where we seek to exceed the procedural limitations inscribed in legal processes. We seek to expand the later fora into sites of accountability, and venues for the political struggle in their own right.

New social, political, and technological conditions demand a new set of investigative practices. Our mode of work is grounded in the socialising of evidence production and dissemination. Our investigations are undertaken within a diverse and poly-perspectival community of practice.

We connect the ‘situated knowledge’ of groups working at the frontline of political struggle with other investigative reporters, whistleblowers, activists, lawyers, scientists, artists and architects from around the world. Forensis works in collaboration with a wide range of civil society groups, individuals, families, and communities affected by state violence, surveillance and repression.

Recognizing the limitation of each individual forum of accountability, we make our cases across different ones – legal, political, media and cultural venues. We use exhibitions, teachings, and publications to share our concepts, methods and techniques with communities and individuals resisting state violence, as well as with the wider public. We call this practice ‘open verification’.

Our team includes architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, artists, scientists and lawyers, and is led by Eyal Weizman, Director of Forensic Architecture and Professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Learn more about our current team here.

Forensis, and the community of practice around it – which we call the Investigative Commons – seeks to drive the development of those new investigative modes while providing an organizational infrastructure and physical space within which different investigative practices can work together.

The Investigative Commons includes reporters, lawyers, activists, scientists, architects, filmmakers, and cultural institutions, advancing conceptual and technical research alongside decisive casework.

Learn more about the Investigative Commons here: www.investigative-commons.org.

Design and development by Alan Woo.