Contesting violence, challenging aesthetic boundaries

Semester
Automne 2019
Dates
28.10.2019 - 29.10.2019
10am
 
HEAD Genève
Boulevard Helvétique 9
1205 Genève
 
CCC Research Master Program
2nd floor on the right, rooms 26-27
ECTS
3
Kunsthochschule
Universität / Haute École
HEAD
Website
https://head.hesge.ch/ccc/turbulence/
Teacher
Charles Heller and Samaneh Moafi
Contact email
for student applications
camilla.paolino@hesge.ch ; julia.pecheur@hesge.ch
Samaneh Moafi holds a PhD from The Architectural Association (AA), and a a BA and MA in Architecture from the University of Technology, Sydney. Moafi’s PhD thesis examined struggle and resistance from the home, with a particular focus on gender and class relations in Iran.  Before joining Forensic Architecture in 2015, Moafi practiced as an architect in Australia, taught BA Architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney, MArch Urban Design at the Bartlett School, University College, London, and led a number of short courses at the Royal College of Arts and the AA. At Forensic Architecture, Moafi oversees the Centre for Contemporary Nature. Her research is focused on developing new evidentiary techniques for environmental violence.
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          Content description
Charles Heller and Samaneh Moafi have been conducting practice-based research over several years in collaboration with the Forensic Architecture agency at Goldsmiths, University of London. Charles Heller has co-founded the connected Forensic Oceanography project, which has focused on developing methodologies allowing to document and contest the shifting modalities of border violence operating the EU’s maritime frontier (https://forensic-architecture.org/category/forensic-oceanography ), and produced work that operates across the fields of human rights, academic research and art. Samaneh Moafi, who has contributed to several Forensic Oceanography reports and videos, has conducted over the last years her own research on violence and resistance in the home in Iran, and led several Forensic Architecture projects on the violence of climate change (https://forensic-architecture.org/programme/exhibitions/centre-for-contemporary-nature ).
While both Heller and Moafi’s project develop methodologies to trace different forms of violence, in the process each also seeks to challenge the boundaries of the (in)visible and (in)audible. This workshop will introduce students to the different methods Heller and Moafi have deployed in order to reveal forms of violence – those of borders, of gender, and climate destruction - that remain hidden or are difficult to perceive as such even when they are spectacularised. In the process, students will be will introduced to an “aesthetic” understanding of political and social processes – in which, drawing from the work of Jaques Rancière and others, “aesthetics” will be understood as what presents itself to sensory experience. Taking as example the work presented by Heller and Moafi, and by experimenting with the politics of aesthetics approach in relation to their own projects and interests, students will develop the capacity to analyse changing aesthetic regimes and their political implications, and to produce forms allowing to intervene within them.
The first day of the workshop will be dedicated to discussing reading concerning the politics of aesthetics and the presentations of Heller and Moafi’s research. In the second day, students will have time to experiment with the politics of aesthetics approach and their work will be discussed.
 
Reading: 
Jacques Rancière, (2006), “The politics of aesthetics”; http://roundtable.kein.org/node/463
Andrea Brighenti, (2007), Visibility: A Category for the Social Sciences. Current Sociology; 55; 323.
Yves Winter, (2012), “Violence and Visibility”, New Political Science, 34, no. 2: pp.195–202.
Weizman, Eyal, (2014), “Forensis: Introduction”, In Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, ed. Forensic Architecture. Berlin: Sternberg Press, pp.9–32.
Remarks
Bios: 
Charles Heller is a researcher and filmmaker whose work has a long-standing focus on the politics of migration. In 2015, he completed a Ph.D. in Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London, and after several postdoctoral research project supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) he is currently visiting lecturer at the Graduate Institute, Geneva. Together with Lorenzo Pezzani, in 2011 Heller co-founded Forensic Oceanography, a collaborative project that has developed innovative methodologies to document the conditions that lead to migrants’ deaths at sea. Heller and Pezzani have also launched the WatchTheMed platform, a tool enabling nongovernmental actors to exercise a critical right to look at the EU’s maritime frontier. They have authored a number of human rights reports, including "Report on the Left-to-Die Boat" (2012); “Death by Rescue” (2016) ; “Blaming the Rescuers” (2017) and "Mare Clausum", which have contributed to strategic litigation and have had a major impact both within the fields of migration and border studies, nongovernmental politics and the public sphere. Their videos have been exhibited internationally, including at the HKW, the Venice Biennale, the MACBA, the MOMA, the ICA and Manifesta 12.
Samaneh Moafi holds a PhD from The Architectural Association (AA), and a a BA and MA in Architecture from the University of Technology, Sydney. Moafi’s PhD thesis examined struggle and resistance from the home, with a particular focus on gender and class relations in Iran.  Before joining Forensic Architecture in 2015, Moafi practiced as an architect in Australia, taught BA Architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney, MArch Urban Design at the Bartlett School, University College, London, and led a number of short courses at the Royal College of Arts and the AA. At Forensic Architecture, Moafi oversees the Centre for Contemporary Nature. Her research is focused on developing new evidentiary techniques for environmental violence.