Forensic Architecture
The Capitol, RMIT University, Melbourne
![People are seated in theatre seats, watching cloud studies on the big screen. The photograph is taken from one of the seats. The film frame captured shows plumes of phosphorus fallinbg like lightning bolts across Gaza.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/626a617278e46b5280ab88e9/205992de-de79-4525-a8fe-11e7c2b76fb0/People+are+seated+in+theatre+seats%2C+watching+cloud+studies+on+the+big+screen.+The+photograph+is+taken+from+one+of+the+seats.+The+film+frame+captured+shows+plumes+of+phosphorus+fallinbg+like+lightning+bolts+across+Gaza.jpg)
![Cloud Studies is playing on the wide screen of an Art Deco movie theatre, The Capitol. The film frame captured in the moment of documentation shows fourteen cylindrical objects..jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/626a617278e46b5280ab88e9/cbf7bda7-d251-4253-8191-21f08056f70d/Cloud+Studies+is+playing+on+the+wide+screen+of+an+Art+Deco+movie+theatre%2C+The+Capitol.+The+film+frame+captured+in+the+moment+of+documentation+shows+fourteen+cylindrical+objects..jpg)
![Three people wearing headphones are watching three screens, mounted on wheeled structures, each showing the Forensic Architecture film Cloud Studies. A triangular patch of carpet is in the foreground, with geometric patterning. .jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/626a617278e46b5280ab88e9/aa352221-6c62-4aa1-88c2-3db57b9260be/Three+people+wearing+headphones+are+watching+three+screens%2C+mounted+on+wheeled+structures%2C+each+showing+the+Forensic+Architecture+film+Cloud+Studies.+A+triangular+patch+of+carpet+is+in+the+foreground%2C+with+geometric+patterning.+.jpg)
![Three people wearing headphones are watching three screens, mounted on wheeled structures, each showing the Forensic Architecture film Cloud Studies. Two of the three watching have their arms crossed..jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/626a617278e46b5280ab88e9/bb32775a-d3c7-4684-9d62-67f683ed14e6/Three+people+wearing+headphones+are+watching+three+screens%2C+mounted+on+wheeled+structures%2C+each+showing+the+Forensic+Architecture+film+Cloud+Studies.+Two+of+the+three+watching+have+their+arms+crossed..jpg)
![A dark room, a person in headphones is watching a screen, which is bright green with patches of yellow, black, and red..jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/626a617278e46b5280ab88e9/16d34ea1-d846-4274-897e-4a5dd47c2995/A+dark+room%2C+a+person+in+headphones+is+watching+a+screen%2C+which+is+bright+green+with+patches+of+yellow%2C+black%2C+and+red..jpg)
![A person in headphones watching a split scene, two views of a cityscape. The left scene is taken from above, as if from a satellite. The right screen shows clouds of pale smoke in teh distance, and buildings in the foreground.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/626a617278e46b5280ab88e9/dd1c8aea-a644-41fc-ae57-f43937be97f5/A+person+in+headphones+watching+a+split+scene%2C+two+views+of+a+cityscape.+The+left+scene+is+taken+from+above%2C+as+if+from+a+satellite.+The+right+screen+shows+clouds+of+pale+smoke+in+teh+distance%2C+and+buildings+in+the+foreground.jpg)
Feature image description: Cloud Studies is playing on the wide screen of an Art Deco movie theatre, The Capitol. The film frame captured in the moment of documentation shows fourteen cylindrical objects, in pastel jewel tones, scattered across the ground, close to a mesh fence. The interior of the theatre is ornate, covered with crystalline plaster elements. The photograph has been taken from the upper tier of seats, so that we are looking downwards towards the screen, and a technician in a white t-shirt, who is on the left balcony, head bent, intently observing a computer screen. [Other image descriptions embedded in alt text.]
Cloud Studies
📍 The Capitol, RMIT University, Melbourne
In the aftermath of this calamity there is a danger that rather than offering sanctuary to all living species, sadly the world will enter a new period of tension and brutality…Many states will seek to fortify their borders in the hope of protecting themselves from the outside. They will also seek to conceal the constitutive violence that they continue to habitually direct at the most vulnerable. Life behind screens and in gated communities will become the norm.
— Achille Mbembe
Forensic Architecture’s Cloud Studies (2021) is a sweeping investigation into toxic air, and the way in which the atmosphere – including the air we breathe – can be weaponised, transformed into acts of state violence rooted in longstanding structures of colonialism, capitalism and racism. In other words, power. Spanning a decade of research and a range of investigatory methodologies, including 3D modelling, fieldwork, geolocation, machine learning and remote sensing, Cloud Studies has been distilled into a narrative video work of 26 minutes and 9 seconds. That narrative is composed of a series of nine vignettes or chapters, each titled for a different chemical compound, and each introduced on screen by its chemical formula and common name: cement, white phosphorus, glyphosate, carbon dioxide, methane, tear gas, water, chlorine, and cement, again.
The video begins with cement (CaO, or ‘quick lime’), as we hear an explosion while a cloud, seen from a distance, comes into view. The image is incredibly beautiful, as clouds are, and sets into motion a purposeful tension that runs throughout the video between aesthetics and evidence, art and politics. This is the tension we seek to harness by presenting the work at The Capitol, RMIT University, the opulent, historic art deco theatre in Naarm Melbourne’s Central Business District, designed by Marion Mahony Griffin and Walter Burley Griffin, and opened to the pubic in 1924. Throughout Open House Weekend July 2022, Cloud Studies will run on a loop in the main cinema, the crystalline ceiling meant to recall a glittering cave, providing a powerful counterpoint to the devastating narrative on screen. Archival films supplementing the screening will be viewable in the lobby.
As the video begins, the narrator tells us that in 2008, Israel launched a bombing campaign against the Gaza Strip, and describes a man explaining that in that moment, he felt as if he were breathing in his home. ‘Bomb clouds are architecture in gaseous form,’ explains the narrator, whose voice is poised, female and aphoristic, ‘changing from columns to mushrooms, before dissipating into the atmosphere’. The video goes on to chart the impacts, often nearly impossible to trace, of different chemical clouds: ecocide in Indonesia, in the form of forest fires emitting carbon dioxide; methane released by fracking in Argentina, and the Mapuche activists’ protests against that activity; tear gas, used as a centrifugal force to disperse masses of protesters in Tahrir, Pearl and Taksim squares, as well as Black Lives Matter protests in the United States; chlorine bombs dropped by the Syrian government on its people, and so on.
Cloud Studies consciously mimics Victorian attempts to taxonomise and classify – and paint – clouds, nebulous and shapeshifting as they may be. Samaneh Moafi, the lead researcher on the project and an Australian-trained architect, explains, ‘Images of clouds – carcinogenic plumes, chemical gases, or smoke from fires – are hard to interpret. From within, these clouds appear as a kind of fog, an atmospheric blur if you like, fast moving and morphing. How can we use such images and video documentation to search for accountability, perhaps in the service of what Achille Mbembe foregrounded as the universal right to breathe?’—TM
References
Achille Mbembe, “The Universal Right to Breathe,” trans. Carolyn Shread, Critical Inquiry 47 (Winter 2021): 60
Samaneh Moafi, “The Cloud Atlas as a Project,” paper delivered at the symposium, “Global Photography: Temporalities and Spatial Logics,” University of New Mexico Art Museum, 3 October 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oaja9kbLDfQ&ab_channel=UNMArtMuseum, accessed 27 April 2022.
Image Description: A typeface formed from the architectural contours of aging, urban apartment blocks shapes the phrase ‘WORD CLOUD’. The letterforms are in disarray, a pixelated explosion. The words ‘Word Cloud’ in a typeface designed by Tanya Gidwani.
Audio production by Simon Maisch. Supported by SIAL Sound Studios, School of Design, RMIT University
The following text has been commissioned to reflect upon and respond to Forensic Architecture, Cloud Studies at The Capitol, RMIT University. The text is intended as a form of experimental wayfinding when engaging with the work.
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Sources, traces, particles accessed March–April 2022
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archive.curbed.com/2017/6/8/15755858/marion-mahony-walter-burley-griffin-wright-drawings -
Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, investigating human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries and corporations. FA works in partnership with institutions across civil society, from grassroots activists, to legal teams, to international NGOs and media organisations, to carry out investigations with and on behalf of communities and individuals affected by conflict, police brutality, border regimes and environmental violence. Their investigations employ cutting-edge techniques in spatial and architectural analysis, open-source investigation, digital modelling and immersive technologies; as well as documentary research, situated interviews and academic collaboration. Findings from FA’s investigations have been presented in national and international courtrooms, parliamentary inquiries, and exhibitions at some of the world’s leading cultural institutions and in international media, as well as in citizen’s tribunals and community assemblies.
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Guest, Riggs (based in Naarm Melbourne and London) is an architecture x literature exchange between Stephanie Guest and Kate Riggs. Guest was awarded a University Medal for her Honours thesis on Australian Literature at the University of Sydney and is completing a Masters of Architecture at the Melbourne School of Design. Riggs holds a Masters of Architectural Design with distinction from RMIT and works as an urban designer in local government, London. In 2017, Guest, Riggs won The Lifted Brow & RMIT non/fiction Lab Prize for Experimental Nonfiction. They have collaborated with MPavilion and exhibited at NGV Melbourne Design Week, RMIT Design Hub and Counihan Gallery. Their most recent work is a chapter in After the Australian Ugliness, published by Thames & Hudson Australia and the National Gallery of Victoria (2021).