“Our work requires questioning the official narrative of events”

Agata Nguyen Chuong works on environmental violence, migration and landscapes of extraction, and her organisation Forensic Architecture won this year’s Right Livelihood Award. In this interview, Agata explains how she used digital technology to investigate the German colonial genocide.

Congrats for winning the Right Livelihood Award!

Agata Nguyen Chuong: Thank you so much. It is really an honour to receive the award. Escpecially to be among the other people who were awarded.

On your website it says that Forensic Architecture is an interdisciplinary agency operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia and the law. How would you describe the work yourself?

Nguyen Chuong: The way I’d describe it is that we investigate cases in support of local communities who are suffering violations of their rights at the hands of powerful actors – whether they be states, the police or private companies. We use our methods, which have been developed over more than a decade, in a way that brings a spatial angle to the questioning. There’s always a question in the investigation that requires some kind of spatial thinking, spatial analysis.

What does this exactly mean?

Nguyen Chuong: In simple terms, I would say that our work requires us to think spatially and plastically about events that are reconstructed from very different sets of evidence, data and materials that document them. Where our kind of skills are best placed and best suited is where we have to work with very disparate sources in order to piece together more complete pictures of the events that actually took place. It is this polyperspectival approach that allows us to work towards a more complete picture of the ‘truth’. This often requires us to challenge the official narrative.

Why is the spatial part so important?

Nguyen Chuong: The origins of forensic architecture as a field of thought and practice lie at the intersection of architecture/architectural practice, theory, but also media studies. The media plays a fundamental role in our work in that the media is reconfiguring our relationship to the production of truth, in particular the widespread access to satellite imagery and other breakthroughs such as social media – which have given individuals the ability to document events that they previously couldn’t capture and disseminate in the same way. The founders of Forensic Architecture (FA) were also spatial thinkers, media practitioners, artists, etc. It was out of this kind of ferment that FA as a field emerged.

You are the Researcher-in-Charge of the FA investigation “German Colonial Genocide in Namibia“. In a trilogy, you tell the story of this genocide, of which there is little visual evidence. How did you proceed? Can you explain the project to us?

Nguyen Chuong: We were approached by ECCHR (European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights) in 2021, against the background of the Joint Declaration signed by the German and Namibian governments that year. This was the first time that Germany had formally ‘apologised’ for what ‘from today’s perspective would be considered genocide’. This loaded qualification of the crime of genocide, stemming from the intertemporal principle in law, is of course deliberate and has implications for the prospect of genuine reparations for the descendant communities. Instead, the subject of the negotiations was ‘development aid’, which was negotiated bilaterally between the two governments, without the participation of the traditional leadership of the Ovaherero and Nama, representing the two respective groups. It was in the context of the outrage and objections to the Joint Declaration that we were brought on board. ECCHR is one of our long-term partners and had already established contacts with the traditional leadership groups in Namibia, the Ovaherero Traditional Authority and the Nama Traditional Leaders Association.

We were asked to produce a body of visual evidence about the genocide that would provide the knowledge base for discussing the atrocities perpetrated during the genocide, contributing to discussions in support of reparation claims and to a practice of knowledge production that rewrites history on the terms of the victim parties, centering the voices of the Ovaherero and Nama. To this day, the leadership groups object the JD and call for a new negotiation process = with them as part of the negotiating table.

One of the most traumatic chapters in this history is the story of Shark Island, the site of the deadliest concentration camp established by the Germans in Namibia. Can you tell us more about this part of your investigation? How did you reconstruct this camp with little evidence left?

Nguyen Chuong: At the beginning of an investigation like this, there is a thorough process of going through all the archives that we have access to. There are a number of them, mostly in Germany. What we’ve learnt in the two years we’ve been working on this is that the material in these archives requires a lot of extra work on the part of the researchers to understand exactly what it is we’re looking at in these photographs, because they’re often mislabelled. They’re also not properly or accurately dated. We are dealing with a visual record that was largely, if not always, produced by the perpetrators of the crimes. They definitely have a very partial perspective, and they document these places in a way that can sometimes reveal traces of propaganda treatment.

What do you mean by traces of propaganda and how were the photographs used?

Nguyen Chuong: A lot of these photographs were sent back to Germany at the time to act as pieces of propaganda for the colonisation of German South Africa and for settlers to come to these territories and colonise. In the case of Shark Island and Swakopmund, we came across some stages photographs that made it seem as though the treatment of prisoners of war was not as gruesome as it in fact was.

Apart from the archives, how did you conduct your investigation?

Nguyen Chuong: With Shark Island, we went on a field trip where we did all of our documentation on the ground. The main part of the field trip, however, was a series of interviews with descendants of the survivors. Situated testimony’ is the term we use to refer to these interviews, which always take place in front of a digital model operated by a researcher, in which we can navigate with our witness. After going through the process of collecting images, information and written sources, we make our reconstructions in the 3D models. But during the field trip, many of these things are thrown up in the air by the interviews with the descendants. In this project, we have done the situated testimony with many people at the same time, in the same space, to allow a collaborative process that is better suited to the collective, intergenerational nature of oral history. In this way they can give each other feedback or respond to each other’s answers. It is this process of situated testimony that forms the basis of this research. The ability to read into these images what can’t be seen immediately is an essential part of the work.

How do you deal with historical accuracy in these cases?

Nguyen Chuong: We always consult with historians who have worked in this context. In this case Jürgen Zimmerer, David Olusoga, Horst Drechsler and Casper Erichsen. We rely on whatever material exists and whatever historical research has been done. We cross-reference and corroborate the information we find in historical and primary sources with our spatial and visual analysis. We also look at the diaries of military leaders such as Leutwein, officers or missionaries, which are some of the most important primary sources. This is how we found one of the mass burial sites in the bay, just outside the town of Lüderitz. We tried to identify the site from several scarce sources of information. We then consulted oral histories and conducted a survey to confirm that these were indeed the graves of the Shark Island victims.

Why did you decide to publish this investigation in a trilogy?

Nguyen Chuong: The significance and the sheer scope of the work motivated the split into three independent investigations, although all of the parts of course feed into one another. We worked on this phase of the research for almost two years. The temporal distance of the event is also new territory for FA, which meant that we had to develop some new ways of working and reconsidering what questions we are able to pose and answer. This sometimes forced us to treat the investigations with a different level of resolution in mind.

What does that mean?

Nguyen Chuong: We began the first phase of this project with the first phase of the genocide in 1904. By focusing on this period of history, we were able to understand the efforts of the Ovaherero to resist German colonialism, which took place in places like Okahandja and culminated in the brutal onslaught by German colonial troops at the Waterberg Plateau. The battles at the Waterberg led to the expulsion of the Ovaherero into the Omaheke Desert and were followed by the infamous extermination order issued in October. With the three inquiries published this year, we wanted to explore what followed at the two most notorious concentration camps of the period – Shark Island and Swakopmund – as well as the Hornkranz massacre, which predates the 1904-1908 genocide by over a decade, but which the Nama consider to be the first genocidal massacre of their people. Identifying the scope of our work was done with and at the request of the Nama and Ovaherero leadership. The research on Shark Island was very important to both groups. During our research, we found out about the planned port expansion, which became an urgent threat to the island. Focusing on this was very important for further advocacy that our partners are doing against the port expansion to protect the site of the concentration camp and its memory. And then Swakopmund was again important to focus on because of the urgent need to protect the graves of genocide victims, and to highlight the work that activists like Laidlaw Peringanda are doing to preserve them.

You were also able to bring your project to Germany and were presented at the HAU in Berlin. What were the reactions at the screening and how did the discussion in Berlin go?

Nguyen Chuong: The screening was sold out and very successful. Our partner from the Nama Group was also a panellist and the discussion revolved around the port development on Shark Island. They discussed the new green hydrogen project that is being planned and earmarked for the desert areas south of Shark Island. The proposed port expansion at Shark Island is part of a larger infrastructure plan for the area south of Lüderitz, which includes a major new green hydrogen production infrastructure. The green hydrogen project is ‘on its way to being granted ‘strategic foreign project’ status in Germany, and the German company Enertrag is a majority shareholder. The plan is to develop this infrastructure there and ship the hydrogen back to Germany and other EU countries in the form of ammonia. All this is happening on the ancestral land of the !Aman Nama people. Our partners are very concerned and vocal about this because they see it as a new era of ‘green colonialism’, where land in the Global South is grabbed and sacrificed in the service of energy transitions in the Global North.

Was it easy for you to find a venue in Germany or to present and discuss your project in the country of the perpetrators?

Nguyen Chuong: Yes and no. We had a presentation of the results of our fieldwork at the House of World Cultures (HKW) in December last year, when the first phase was completed. But there have definitely been challenges with funding the work. I’m based in the London office, but most of the team is based in Berlin and the Berlin office is where a lot of the work happens. There have been struggles to secure funding to do the project to the extent that we originally hoped. But in terms of dissemination in Germany, there have been plenty of opportunities, most recently at the Grassi Museum in Leipzig. The work has contributed in no small way to the general culture of remembrance that exists in Germany around these events, and it needs to be disseminated even more widely. We hope that next year will be the time to mobilise all this material and educational and cultural forums. But it is also very important for us to share all the results and the final work in Namibia. The problems that exist in Germany around the level of public education, around this genocide, are also reflected in Namibia. It’s not really a topic that is widely discussed in schools, for example. It doesn’t fit into the government’s line or agenda of what constitutes the history of the nation of the Namibian state. It is not part of the nation-building project of the unitary state that is Namibia today.

It seems like you want to hold the powerful to account. Are you pursuing these kinds of goals with your projects? Or what do you hope for as a result of your work?

Nguyen Chuong: Holding power and those responsible to account is one of the main reasons for our work. It’s at the heart of FA’s work. In terms of the research in Namibia, we were given a specific mandate by the Nama and Ovaherero to conduct our research with issues of commemoration, heritage, education and conservation in mind. The choice of these particular sites and events that we looked at, Waterberg, Shark Island Camp, Swakopmund, they all have similar issues. It’s the lack of commemoration of these events where they happened. At Waterberg there’s now a tourist resort. On Shark Island there’s a campsite for tourists. In Windhoek, where the concentration camp used to be, there’s a car park.

That sounds almost unbelieveable.

Nguyen Chuong: Yes, we’re doing this work with the hope that we can show and demonstrate how the two governments could easily address this gap in memory culture and commemoration aspects of the genocide. We hope for a tangible, meaningful and material change on the ground, and for this history to be rewritten, with the support of our research.

This is exactly what our eCommemoration programme is all about. We want to know how new technologies can potentially change history.

Nguyen Chuong: That’s fascinating – and indeed very relevant for our Namibia work. The work starts with our approach to the testimony, and the collection and recording of it in these immersive models. Each of those models after situated testimony becomes a repository of this oral history that was shared with us. The sites in Namibia have all been erased, there’s no way of returning ever to them or being able to see them in reality. At the very least, we can create these simulations and renderings of it for generations to come.

The work you do involves bringing together a lot of expertise. At FA, scientists, architects and journalists work together. Would you say this is the future of science?

Nguyen Chuong: To really activate research, it needs to be as interdisciplinary as possible. The most effective way to do that is to take research into all these different forums – conferences where practitioners meet, like your eCommemoration Convention, or gallery spaces. Gallery spaces can be transformed into a public forum where it’s not just an exhibition, it’s also a space of public discourse, it becomes a space of education for young people and it becomes a space of testimony. Like in the HKW, where we had the testimony of a direct descendant of one of the victims of what happened to the prisoners on Shark Island, ten minutes away from the Bundestag. It’s a way of reaching an audience that would otherwise never be reached.