Contributor

Forensic Oceanography is a project initiated within the Forensic Architecture agency by Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani, in the wake of the Arab uprisings of 2011. It seeks to critically investigate the militarized border regime imposed by European states across the EU’s maritime frontier, analyzing the political, spatial, and aesthetic conditions that have turned the waters of the Mediterranean Sea into a deadly liquid for the illegalized migrants seeking to cross it. The more than 30,000 migrants who have died at and through the sea over the last 30 years are the victims of what Forensic Oceanography call “liquid violence.” By combining human testimonies with traces left across the digital sensorium of the sea constituted by radars, satellite imagery, and vessel tracking systems, Forensic Oceanography has mobilized surveillance means “against the grain” to contest both the violence of borders and the regime of (in)visibility on which they are founded. The project has generated human rights reports and academic articles, as well as videos that have been exhibited internationally.