Forensic Investigation of Alleys and Corridors

ENTERING THE PASSAGE

In contemporary practice, the term forensic has been used broadly for the act of scientific research and techniques in criminal investigations. The term originated from the Latin word, forensis, where it pertains to an open court or a set up that demands the participation of the public. It stimulates discussion that grows into an argumentative discourse. The Latin word also describes a marketplace or a forum. Therefore, rather than denoting the term as a scientific method associated with criminal investigations, this observational discourse applied forensic as a reflection on the relationship of the public and the site. This discussion would further expand and explore on the involvement of the public and how they could initiate causal dialogues in alleys and corridors.

Eyal Weizman, and his team in the Forensic Architecture, applied the term as the operative concept of a critical practice, committed to investigates any events and actions to the scale of bodies and buildings. The ground of Forensic Architecture’s approach to an investigation is to use the jargon by examining the two fundamental elements of a site; fields and forums. Fields refers to the site of investigation, while forums, on the other hand, is attributed to the place where the results of an investigation are being demonstrated and debated. Fields is not merely a flat and passive site where events are being mapped on, but it a dynamic space that shapes conflict as well as being shaped by it. Forums, however, is a composite apparatus. It is a conjunction of the presented object or site, the interpreter and the assembly of public gathering (Forensic Architecture (Project) and Weizman, 2014).

As sites with spatial quality, buildings or the built environments are not just passive elements, nor just a witness to a crime. They are a complex conglomeration of structures, infrastructure and services that are capable of interacting and acting upon their surroundings, thus moulding the events in the space. These are the essence to any corridors and alleys in the city. This type of urban elements is classified as a special and unique architectural class, and they will be examined meticulously both as the fields and the forums. Contrary to the practice of criminal investigations being brought to a specified court, the observations and investigations of the events in alleys and corridors are being discussed on site, in the context of the alley itself.

These urban spaces can be closely compared to the description by Juliet Rufford (2015) in her book on ‘Theatre and Architecture’, where she suggested that with external factors such as the use of lights, materials, technology, texture and sound, architecture sculpts the space and the organisation of the environment in which we live and ‘act’. The stories and events in theatres are orchestrated by the bodies inhabiting it, the setting and the external elements. Historically, the city was a stage on which the middle-class Victorian played out their lives. Theatre back then existed as an essential part of the urban life, without any specific architectural component being attributed to its exclusive use. The situation “allows those producing a performance to place it in whatever locale seemed most suitable meant that theatre could use to its own advantage the already existing connotations of other spaces both in themselves and in their placement within the city” (Carlson, 1989). Theatres are depicted as social events that encourage more act of active discourse. Accordingly, alleys are looked at as pocket theatres or place of performances in the cities.

The events occur in these tight spaces of the cities, and are congealed and concentrated. These “congealed events”, described by Mikhail Bakhtin as “condensed reminders of the kind of time and space that typically functions there” makes the alleys intriguing and worth investigating into (Bakhtin, 1982). Considering the abundance of spatial qualities in the alleys, the events are site-specific where it can only happen in that specific type of space with a specific time structure. Bernard Tschumi proposes that the events that takes place in a space is as important as the space itself. He wanted to shift the focus to the actions that occur inside and around a space, such as the movement of bodies, to the activities and to the objective that drives a space (Tschumi, 1994).

“To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit murder.”

- Bernard Tschumi,

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Bakhtin conceptualize the episodic events in the cities as a term that he called ‘chronotope’. The importance of the chronotope is highlighted where it “makes narrative events concrete, make them take on flesh, causes blood to flow in their veins. An event can be communicated, it becomes information, one can give precise data on the place and time of its occurrence” (Bakhtin, 1982). Hence, time becomes apparent in a space, and these narratives are heavily determined by the time and the action of the space and place.

The thesis is an observational exercise, aimed to exhaust alleys, corridors and other similar class of space of its events and spatial values. These pocket spaces of the cities that are often regarded as spaces that are absent of any potential are the considered as cracks in the cities that are concentrated with hyper charged energy. As the audience and the public, you will venture through different narratives as you traverse through the different type of alleys and passageways, directly or indirectly involve in the events. The circumstances are naturally altered by each new space they occur in.

“To move is never to go from one place to the next, but always to execute some figure, to assume a certain body rhythm.”

The occurrence of the different narratives is significant and exclusive to the space it occurs in. Different alleys tend to have very different characteristic in terms of its inhabitants, the actions happening within it, the character of the space, as well as the character of time. Some alleys are slow and sensitive, while some others are intense and fast. With the different combinations of the determination of events, it raises the question: could there be a different type of narrative, unique and explicit to alleys and corridors?

Bertillon’s Photography Method.

Courtesy of Préfecture de police de Paris,

Service de l’Identité judiciaire.