@misc{Schuppli, author = {Schuppli, Susan}, title = {Material Witness}, abstract = {Material Witness is an experimental documentary that examines a series of media artifacts to have emerged out of situations of contemporary conflict and historical violence. Consisting of five episodes (two of which are presented here), the video tracks these media materials through the various public and legal forums in which they participate as corroborative or disputed forms of "evidence" such as the ICTY, the un, the international atomic energy agency, and COP 15 (the 2009 un Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen). rather than focusing entirely upon the content of such media, as might be expected, the project also explores the ways in which crisis is registered as a "material violation" itself; in other words how histories are materially or computationally encoded by media and by which means the complex political realities they are embedded in are rendered visible. in short, it is an inquiry into how objects become agents of contestation between different stake- holders and truth claims.}, language = {en} } @misc{Schuppli, author = {Schuppli, Susan}, title = {Memorial in Exile}, abstract = {Living Death Camps describes the condition of two former concentration camps located in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia: the World War II-era camp of Staro Sajmište, and the camp of Omarska, dating from the Yugoslav war. Both are presently inhabited and used for other purposes. Living Death Camps names a collaborative project that seeks to investigate the complex material and political issues currently unfolding around these two sites, and to understand how the politics of commemoration in which each of them is embroiled. Each of these sites has a complex and singular history, which we have undertaken to expose in our research. It is by addressing the specificity of each site that we sought to understand and intervene in the respective transformation of each site into a post-conflict site of commemoration. Starting from the acknowledgment that these two former death camps are presently inhabited and used, that they are places upon which the lives of many depend, we argue that it is a necessity for each of these sites to develop a project of commemoration that would remain responsive to the demands of ongoing life. In an attempt to engage with this necessity and the difficult questions surrounding it, our research has turned to some of the methods of contemporary archaeology. Our forensics have surveyed and explored the multiplicity of events registered in the materiality of each site, without an a priori focus on the historical layer that the death camp has left behind. The material entanglement of historical layers in each site forms the ground upon which a call for a simultaneous attention to its present and pasts can be made. An inverted symmetry emerges from the research we have conducted in each of the two sites. While in both our research culminated in the assembly of a public forum, in Staro Sajmište we opposed plans for commemoration that involved the eviction of its current residents, while in Omarska we demanded that the local community be granted the right to commemorate the tragic events that took place on the site - which is today occupied by a commercial mine in operation.}, language = {en} } @misc{Schuppli, author = {Schuppli, Susan}, title = {Can The Sun Lie}, abstract = {DISPUTED SUNSET "Can the sun lie?" asked a US court in 1886 when reflecting upon the truth claims of photographic evidence. However, as photographic practices became more commonplace and awareness of the ease of image manipulation increased, so too did doubts about their evidentiary value. Soon, photographic experts began to face each other in court and a new order of certainty appeared, produced by the domain of expertise. In the Canadian Arctic the sun is setting many kilometers further west along the horizon and the stars are no longer where they should be. Sunlight is behaving differently in this part of the world as the warming Arctic air causes temperature inversions and throws the setting sun off-kilter. The longstanding dispute between lay knowledge and scientific expertise is forcefully reanimated by current climate change debates, particularly with respect to indigenous storytelling traditions. This is a reordering of expertise and its claims to truth that turn on the evidence proffered by nature itself.}, language = {en} }