Visual culture and the forensic

An on-going series of talks looking at the ideas, the history and contemporary relevance, discussed in new academic publications, presented in an accessible way for a general audience. 

David Houston Jones will be discussing his new book Visual Culture and the Forensic with Dr Kathryn Smith. In his book he  builds a bridge between practices conventionally understood as forensic, such as crime scene investigation, and the broader field of activity which the forensic now designates, for example in performance and installation art as well as photography.

Contemporary work in these areas responds both to forensic evidence, including crime scene photography, and to some of the assumptions underpinning its consumption. It asks how we look, and in whose name, foregrounding and scrutinising the enduring presence of voyeurism in visual media and instituting new forms of ethical engagement. Such work responds to the object-oriented culture associated with the forensic and offers a reassessment of the relationship of human voice and material evidence. It displays an enduring debt to the discursive model of testimony which has so far been insufficiently recognised, and which forms the basis for a new ethical understanding of the forensic. Jones’s analysis brings this methodology to bear upon a strand of contemporary visual activity that has the power to significantly redefine our understandings of the production, analysis and deployment of evidence. Artists examined include Forensic Architecture, Simon Norfolk, Melanie Pullen, Angela Strassheim, John Gerrard, Julian Charrière, Trevor Paglen, Laura Poitras and Sophie Ristelhueber.

David Houston Jones is Professor of French and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter. His book is published by Routledge in March 2022. Alongside your Zoom link will be details of his book and a 20% discount code for purchase from the publisher. 

Kathryn Smith (PhD Forensic Art, LJMU) is an interdisciplinary visual artist, curator and forensic imaging specialist. Her forensic and curatorial work come together as dual expressions of critical care for bodies, infrastructures and non-human things, directed at mutual visibility and legibility, and applies her skills to archival, forensic, humanitarian, and historical contexts. She currently serves as chair of the Department of Visual Arts at Stellenbosch University and is Visiting Fellow at Face Lab, Liverpool John Moores University, and is affiliated to the A4 Arts Foundation. Recent work includes https://www.speakinglikeness.online/ an online artwork and the most extensive repository of first-person accounts of what it is to be a forensic artist from practitioners working in institutional, law enforcement and independent contexts across the world. 

This event is free but requires booking. 

Your Zoom link will be contained in a PDF document sent with your confirmation email and emailed immediately after you have completed your booking.

Image: Autonomy Cube, 2015, Plexiglas cube, computer components, 15¾ × 15¾ × 15¾.  © Trevor Paglen. Courtesy of the Artist, Altman Siegel, San Francisco and Pace Gallery