Eyal Weizman

Year
2019

Medium / Material / Technic
lecture

In his lecture »Digitality and Responsibility«, Eyal Weizman addresses the challenges, opportunities, and risks of digitization for art and culture from political and ethical points of view. How do the role and self-image of art and culture change in a digital society? How does art take responsibility in a digital world?

Weizman is director of the collective Forensic Architecture, a group of architects, filmmakers, coders, and journalists that operates as a multidisciplinary forensic agency to gather evidence and make it public in multiple forums, such as the media, courts, truth commissions and cultural venues. Through their practice, they elucidate recent shifts in modes of domination and conflict, and the particular type of interaction that takes place between the two, especially in an era when state power operates through the obscuring, blurring, manipulation and distortion of facts. In his lecture, Weizman presents practical examples of how Forensic Architecture has been able to dismantle multiple lies or half-truths expressed by presidents and governments across the globe. He calls for a new set of truth practices that can challenge traditional notions of truth. Open verification does this by incorporating aesthetic sensibilities and situated activist networks with multiple sources of knowledge and information that would otherwise seem incompatible.