Optical Tactics for Spatial Justice in the Works of Forensic Architecture and Hito Steyerl

Abstract

From cartographic mapping to the linear perspective, the technics of geometrical representation of our immediate surroundings, the technics of picturing the world are deeply connected with an urge to give an order to it. The ability to depict the world allows us to understand our agency in its forming and to make it the subject of our actions. While this spatial knowledge enables us to estimate and foresee our acts in a perspective, it also provides a crucial foundation for governing human lives. In this line, the current imaging technologies help us to pursue this deep-seated desire. As the world becomes an object of observation, surveillance, and control, the distinctions between the subject and object, the person at the center of the image, and the world outside wither.