Goethe Annual Lecture 2024 Unravelling Colonial Crimes in Namibia: Forensic Architecture in Germany
David Ausserhofer / Robert Bosch Academy
For the Goethe Annual Lecture 2024, we proudly welcomed Prof Eyal Weizman MBE as our guest speaker. He is a life fellow of the British Academy and in 2020 received an MBE for services to architecture. Weizman spoke about Forensic Architecture, the organisation he leads, which in 2010 grew out of the Centre for Architectural Research at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Forensic Architecture is an interdisciplinary research agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia and the law, with projects all over the world - from Bogota to Namibia – interrogating instances of state and corporate violence. They are the recent recipients of the Right Livelihood Prize 2024.
Weizman's lecture discussed the history of Forensic Architecture’s work and the concepts and principles that guide them across all projects.
He covered the opportunities and challenges experienced by their Berlin-based sister agency Forensis, as well as a series of projects they have conducted in partnership with Ovaherero and Nama activists and traditional leadership on the genocide perpetrated by Imperial Germany, in what is today Namibia.
Weizman also discussed cases of state violence in Germany such as the handling of the NSU murders in the early 2000s and of the racist terror attack in Hanau (2020).
The lecture was followed by a Q&A, moderated by Annette Dittert, Senior Correspondent for ARD German TV in London since 2008.
Supported by the Friends of the Goethe-Institut London.
Biographies
Forensic Architecture 2020
Eyal Weizman is the Founder and Director of Forensic Architecture and professor of Spatial and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, where in 2005 he founded the Centre for Research Architecture.
He is the author of numerous books, has held positions in universities worldwide including Princeton, ETH Zurich and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and is on the board of directors of the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ).
Amongst his many awards, he was elected life fellow of the British Academy (2019) and received an MBE for ‘services to architecture’ (2020).
Annette Dittert
Annette Dittert isan award-winning foreign correspondent and ARD German TV Bureau Chief for numerous foreign offices such as New York and Warsaw.
Since 2008 she has been reporting from the UK and won the ‘Journalist of the Year Award” in Germany for her reporting on Brexit in 2019. She also is a contributing editor for Prospect and a columnist for various German political magazines.
