Spector Books, ISBN 978-3959056878, English, 170 pages, 2024, UK
Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture is a very special and important place for critical media, with its interconnections to the Forensic Architecture research group and a strong attitude to political interdisciplinarity, or more specifically to ‘methodologies and investigative techniques to address contemporary spatial politics’. Militant Media: CRA #2 is their second publication and aims to reformulate the intellectual production and collective debate that takes place within their spaces. It begins with a text on ‘reflections on militancy and media’, which reads like a kind of discursive manifesto on the group’s principles and strategies, such as open-source inves...
Spector Books, ISBN 978-3959056878, English, 170 pages, 2024, UK
Goldsmiths’ Centre for Research Architecture is a very special and important place for critical media, with its interconnections to the Forensic Architecture research group and a strong attitude to political interdisciplinarity, or more specifically to ‘methodologies and investigative techniques to address contemporary spatial politics’. Militant Media: CRA #2 is their second publication and aims to reformulate the intellectual production and collective debate that takes place within their spaces. It begins with a text on ‘reflections on militancy and media’, which reads like a kind of discursive manifesto on the group’s principles and strategies, such as open-source investigations, the post-photographic condition and reality ‘as a common’, among others. Five case studies and ten ‘field notes’ follow (the index of which, curiously, can also be found on the cover). The former include the secretive Gangs Matrix, a ‘predictive police database’, while the latter include Ariel Caine and Faiz Abu Rmeleh’s Geo Endoscopies on the inundation of sensor technologies in Israel’s Silwan neighbourhood. If Forensic Architecture is one of the most effective applications of defining tactical media for social justice, then the material gathered in this volume is then able to define and deepen these themes from a plethora of engaging perspectives.