Material Witnesses

This presentation draws upon Susan Schuppli’s research exploring the evidential role of matter. In pursuing this research she has examined a wide range of materials that have recorded trace-evidence of the violence that generated their contexts and explore the institutional and disciplinary protocols that enable their latent histories to be rendered intelligible and made to speak, even if their “speech acts” oftentimes fall upon deaf ears or challenge accepted truths. Throughout Schuppli has tried to account for the myriad ways in which the responsiveness of matter to external forces demands an acute and renewed sense of material and technical specificity in order to grasp the full political implications that such ongoing changes or interactions might yield.

Susan Schuppli is an artist and researcher based in the UK, whose work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters.Current work explores the ways in which toxic ecologies from nuclear accidents and oil spills to the dark snow of the arctic are producing an “extreme image” archive of material wrongs. Creative projects have been exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, Canada, and the US. Forthcoming and recent projects include Slick Images, an installation for the SculptureCenter, NY, Trace Evidence, a video trilogy commissioned by Arts Catalyst UK & Bildmuseet, Sweden and Atmospheric Feedback Loops, a Vertical Cinema commission for Sonic Acts, Amsterdam. She has published widely within the context of media and politics and is author of the forthcoming book, Material Witness (MIT Press). Schuppli is Senior Lecturer and Acting Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London and was previously Senior Research Fellow on the Forensic Architecture project. In 2016 she received the ICP Infinity Award for Critical Writing and Research.