Violence at the threshold of detectability

Monday February 22, 2016 – 7pm

Violence at the threshold of detectability

With Eyal Weizman
Talk in the context of POOL-CH / Master Platform Switzerland

HEAD, Boulevard Helvétique 9, 1205 Geneva, seminar room CCC, salle 27, 2nd floor

(Image) Right: A large hole in the roof of a shop in a market in Miranshah, Pakistan is left after a strike on March 30, 2012. Left: A satellite image depicts the same roof less than a day after the strike. We know this hole is in one of the pixels but cannot tell exactly which - likely one of the darker ones. Forensic Architecture, 2013.
(Image) Right: A large hole in the roof of a shop in a market in Miranshah, Pakistan is left after a strike on March 30, 2012. Left: A satellite image depicts the same roof less than a day after the strike. We know this hole is in one of the pixels but cannot tell exactly which – likely one of the darker ones. Forensic Architecture, 2013.

“When an object photographed approximates the recording ability of a negative, it is in a condition that we can refer to as the threshold of detectability. In this condition, the materiality of the object represented (e.g., the concrete roof/hole) and the materiality of the surface representing it (the surface of the negative/silver salt grains) should be considered both as presence and as representation. Each surface must be equally analysed as an image and as a material reality. (…) The pixel resolution is not only a technical product of optics and data-storage capacity, but a “modulor” designed according to the dimensions of the human body. Unlike other architectural modulors (most notably that of Le Corbusier), it was not meant to help organize space, but rather to stamp the human figure out of photographs. The 50 cm/pixel resolution is useful because it bypasses risks of privacy infringement when recording people in public spaces, much in the same way that Google Street View blurs the face of people or car license plates. But the regulation also has a security rationale: it is not only important details of strategic sites that get camouflaged in the 50 cm/pixel resolution, but the consequences of violence and violations as well.”