‘Disturbing the dead’: Reconstructing forgotten 19th-century genocide | Forensic Architecture

VAt the end of the year 2024, in Namibia at the port of Lüderitz, I found a museum run by German descendants. Along with German imperial flags and memorabilia, it contained Herero artifacts found on nearby Shark Island. What is not mentioned is that, from 1905 to 1907, Shark Island was a concentration camp where Herero and Nama prisoners were subjected to forced labor, starvation and systematic torture. About 3,000 people are said to have died there.

Shark Island was used as a visitor center when I visited. Monuments on the island honor Adolf Lüderitz and Heinrich Vogelsang, German businessmen who helped establish the region known as German South West Africa. Today, it is said that Namibia’s white minority – less than 2% of the population – owns 70% of commercial farms.

Broken LifeworldsA new exhibition opening in Berlin this week, is built around questions of memory, geography and accountability. This exhibition reflects four years of research and Forensic Architecturean interdisciplinary research organization that uses visual reconstruction to investigate human rights violations from Syria and Palestine to Greece and Germany.

It is produced in collaboration with its sister organization from Berlin Legal matters and has been created in collaboration with Namibian researchers, this exhibition shows the legacy of what has been described as the first genocide of the 20th century. First at Namibia’s National Art Gallery in Windhoek last year, it now arrives at the Spore Initiative in the form of three seasonal themes, Bush, Wind and Sand, each looking at how colonial violence was written in the arid region of Namibia.

The main attraction of the exhibition is a series of films that combine oral testimony from the descendants of the victims of the genocide with in-depth field research. A chilling 30-minute documentary on Shark Island’s former concentration camp, showing how German officials built weapons on the island to fight prisoners – and send their skulls to the prison. Germany for pseudoscientific research. The survey also reveals nearby sand dunes, which are believed to be countless graves of prisoners killed on Shark Island.

Under Shark Island, the port of Lüderitz is expected to grow as part of Numbera multi-billion dollar British-German green hydrogen project in Namibia. The project will use Namibia’s wind and solar power to produce hydrogen and green ammonia for export. For Germany, it promises clean energy and independence from foreign fossil fuels.

For many Anama and Herero descendants, it reminds them of the traditional customs. Most of the project’s infrastructure is being developed on an area of ​​4,000 sq km of ancestral land belonging to the Nama people. According to human rights groups, they were not given any opportunity to participate in the process.

Many children also fear that the Hyphen project could undermine efforts to preserve the Namibian site of the victims as a place of remembrance. Sima Luipert, an adviser to the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA) and a supporter of the demonstration, fears that expanding the port will disrupt burial grounds. He said: “When they row, they don’t realize that they are not only moving dirt, but they are disturbing the dead. “Water and place of burial.”

Germany refuses to return Herero and Nama descendants, and provides development aid that was negotiated with the Namibian government. When Germany recognized the atrocities committed in 2021it described them as genocide “as it exists today” – some critics say it avoids legal and political recognition. In this sense, nothing done before the 1948 Genocide Conference qualifies as such.

For Luipert, this partnership shows two levels of clarity. “Germany can quickly retaliate against Nazi victims while enforcing strict anti-retaliation laws against Africans,” he says. For him, the exhibition is a way to give evidence – “a digital shield against the history”.

In recent years, the work of Forensic Architecture has divided opinion. Critics view his work as a persuasive show built on evidence that may be ambiguous; Supporters argue that the group has pioneered new ways to expose violence that may be subtle or hidden.

In the projects proposed in Berlin, transparency about the process is important. This is perhaps most convincing in the video about the Hornkranz massacre in 1893, when German colonial troops led by Curt von François attacked the residence of Nama leader Hendrik Witbooi, killing many civilians. Using oral histories, photographs and in-depth analysis of the changing landscape, the film reconstructs the brutality that does not exist in German collective memory.

The reconstruction of the film is visible in all theaters. Old drawings, maps and a letter written by Von François are displayed alongside digital images that imagine how the village would have looked before the massacre.

Mark Mushiba, executive director of Fractured Lifeworlds and researcher at Forensis, explains that historians have relied heavily on colonial records. Forensic Architecture and Forensis instead sought to “read the form”. At Hornkranz – which is now used as a private farm – that means finding old bullet cartridges, identifying old buildings through the different characteristics of plants and seeing plants as evidence of history. “We were very surprised by the lack of research that was done here,” says Mushiba.

Founder of Forensic Architecture Eyal Weizman describes their approach in Namibia as a form of “forensic botany”. With Forensis, the research team analyzed the grayscale images of colonial photographs to determine the amount of weeds, and combined these findings with others to reconstruct the erasure of local areas. Its purpose is to restore the written history. In Weizman’s words, the show aims to find ways to “send satellites back in time”.

This method is shown in a work called Satellite Images of Hatsamas, made up of three digital images of red and green colors. Combining local knowledge, old photographs and modern satellite data, the publication seeks to see the changes in vegetation over 150 years. The results will show how colonial settlement has changed the land, which has led to desertification and desertification.

Contemporary art adds another dimension to the show. Tuli Mekondjo supports the decorated Herero uniform known as the Schutztruppe. The garment was originally worn by German colonial soldiers, the garment was adopted by the Herero people as a protest and memory. By sewing a human mask onto fabric, Mekondjo transforms it into a memorial garment for the prisoners who died on Shark Island.

Speaking about the exhibition, Weizman returns again and again to the relationship between genocide and the desert: from the forced march of Armenia to the desert of Syria to Gaza, where widespread destruction has turned a large part into a flat land. Fractured Lifeworlds shows how colonial violence leaves choices in the country. As Germany continues to debate the meaning and scope of its cultural memory, this exhibition is a timely reminder that the past remains part of the present.