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How to do forensic through civil society?|Pat To Yan

蘋果日報 2020/12/20 10:03


The Corona’s Court keeps proceeding with the inquest of the tragic death of Chow Tsz Lok. It’s heartbreaking to read the news as the details of his death was unveiled again and again in the court. This week, one of the most ridiculous testimonies is the disappearance of three CCTV cameras. It is said there were only the racks of CCTV, but no cameras were installed inside.
I am reminded of an artwork titled 77sqm_9:26min shown at Documenta 14 in Germany in 2017. This artwork has pushed the German court to review a murder case relevant to Neo-Nazi. Documenta is a contemporary art exhibition taking place every 5 years in Kassel. It was founded by Arnold Bode in 1955 who aimed at driving away the darkness of Nazi Germany. Documenta remains one of the most important events of visual art in the world afterward.
77sqm_9:26min is about a murder case of a 21-year-old man of Turkish descent. On 6 April 2006, Halit Yozgat was killed in an internet café run by him. Yozgat was the ninth victim of a Neo-Nazi group called National Socialist Underground (NSU) which perpetrated xenophobic attacks from 2000 to 2007, leaving ten people dead, one wounded, and also cases of thefts and robberies.
The murderer was arrested, but a member of German intelligent services, Andreas Temme was at the scene. Nevertheless, he claimed he had not heard of any gunshot (the murder used a silenced gun), smelt of any gunpowder and seen the dead body of Yozgat when he left the café. The People’s Tribunal “Unraveling the NSU complex” invited Forensic Architecture, a multidisciplinary research group to re-investigate the case. Forensic Architecture rebuilt the whole café in a studio in Berlin and replayed the whole process of the murder case again and again. Finally, they edited a video work, 77sqm_9:26min and presented it at Documenta 14. 77sqm meant the size of the café and 9:26-minute was the length of time of the subject of the police investigation. The video work proved that Temme gave false testimony. Temme could not explain the blank of 41 seconds. He was suspicious of being at the café while Yozgat was shot. Owing to this artwork, the Munich court had to review the whole case and put Temme in trial.
Ironically, the previous trial of the case had been completed years before the work. Eyal Weizman, the leader of Forensic Architecture, doubted whether the roles of the court, the police, secret service, media and other elements of German society. Here we can see how Art utilizes its most powerful weapon – imagination, to combat injustice and atrocity.
Before that, Forensic Architecture has investigated war crimes in Gaza, former Yugoslavia and Syria. Their investigation also demonstrates the power of civil society. If the social construct, like the court and police, are not doing their jobs well, civil society can still have the capacity to claim justice. Most importantly, we have to find an innovative and right way. I have already seen this stunning work for three years. I have kept asking how we can learn from this case. Now, it seems that we even need a group like Forensic Architecture more than three years ago. How can we claim justice with the power of civil society? It should be something we consider deliberately.
(Pat To Yan, Active in Hong Kong and German Theatre. Playwright, Director, Lecturer. Elected Council Member and the Chairman of the committee of Literary Art of Hong Kong Arts Development Council.)
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