A Prolegomenon to Image-based Historiography: Forensic Architecture’s Spatiotemporal Model and the Split-second Event

Pacula, Nicholas Andrew

Title:

A Prolegomenon to Image-based Historiography: Forensic Architecture’s Spatiotemporal Model and the Split-second Event

dc.contributor.author	Pacula, Nicholas Andrew
dc.contributor.corporatename	Yale University	en_US
dc.date.accessioned	2021-02-24T20:30:42Z
dc.date.available	2021-02-24T20:30:42Z
dc.date.issued	2021-02
dc.description	ConCave Ph.D. Symposium 2020: Divergence in Architectural Research, March 5-6, 2020, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA.	en_US
dc.description.abstract	This paper looks to the investigatory work of Forensic Architecture as a model for new practices of architecture historiography. Departing from architecture history’s long-standing familiarity with events corresponding to long histories, this paper investigates the split-second event and the media platforms that mobilize it. A close reading of a series of video-stills taken from Forensic Architecture’s video-based spatiotemporal investigations reveals that contemporary media has reconditioned our perception of the duration of historical events, as well as the spaces in which these events are thought to have occurred. Beginning with an outline of Forensic Architecture’s spatiotemporal model and the historical narratives it produces, this paper subsequently traces Forensic Architecture’s most recent investigations to eighteenth-century precedents, making evident a historical progression toward increasingly higher “thresholds of detectability.” The emergence of a “forensic aesthetics” in the mid-1980s is then read as the seed of a historiographic rhetoric concerned with densifying and diversifying medias and the platforms facilitating their circulation. Finally, Forensic Architecture’s investigatory work is understood as producing historical narratives in which historiographic methods that routinely differentiate between speaker, content, and reference are eclipsed, offering instead near-seamless continuity and an emergent opportunity to witness history speak for the events and objects under its gaze.	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/64308
dc.identifier.uri	https://doi.org/10.35090/gatech/54
dc.publisher	Georgia Institute of Technology	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	http://hdl.handle.net/1853/64350
dc.relation.ispartofseries	ConCave Ph.D. Symposium 2020 ; Divergence in Architectural Research
dc.subject	Historiography	en_US
dc.subject	Forensic architecture	en_US
dc.title	A Prolegomenon to Image-based Historiography: Forensic Architecture’s Spatiotemporal Model and the Split-second Event	en_US
dc.title.alternative	A PROLEGOMENON TO IMAGE-BASED HISTORIOGRAPHY: Forensic Architecture’s Spatiotemporal Model and the Split-Second Event	en_US
dc.type	Text
dc.type.genre	Proceedings
dspace.entity.type	Publication
local.contributor.corporatename	College of Design
local.contributor.corporatename	School of Architecture
local.relation.ispartofseries	School of Architecture Symposia
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	c997b6a0-7e87-4a6f-b6fc-932d776ba8d0
relation.isOrgUnitOfPublication	0533a423-c95b-41cf-8e27-2faee06278ad
relation.isSeriesOfPublication	51397d92-47f5-4662-8d60-921d15a253a7