Archival Grid: Artistic Strategies in the Tension Between Subjective and Forensic Contemporaneity

Charlott Eifler & Clarissa Thieme

Saturday

12.09.2026

12:00–15:00

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle

Atelier 1

Betonhalle, Atelier 1

Artistic Strategies in the Tension of Subjective and Forensic Witnessing is an artist-run workshop by Clarissa Thieme and Charlott Eifler exploring how forensic evidence, archives, and artistic practice intersect to produce new forms of historical knowledge and collective memory.

Please note: Meeting point is at the entrance of Betonhalle

Vast archival holdings such as those of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) draw attention to the relationship between forensic evidence, measurement, and collective memory. But they also raise doubts about any straightforward causal relationship between legal reckoning, social reconciliation, and communal memory work. How are "tools of evidence" deployed artistically—but also legally and politically—and what effects does this have on our archives and our respective social contexts? The forensic turn (E. Weizman) in post-conflict societies has reinforced an already dominant database logic and aesthetic. But are data archives, with their forensically rooted obscuring of subject and object, even capable of forming a collective memory—or are they too entangled with a regime of digital coloniality (A. Isanović) that inevitably silences subjective witnessing, both individually and collectively?

Further reading
:

Adla Isanović / The Regime of Digital Coloniality: Bosnian Forensic Contemporaneity (CEEOL Press, 2022).
Başak Ertür / Spectacles and Specters: A Performative Theory of Political Trials (Fordham University Press, 2022).

Register here