Forensic Architecture in Pina issue #2

Pina, founded in 2024, is a printed, portable exhibition space. It functions as a commissioning platform, collaborating with artists to create exhibitions existing solely within 60 pages of the magazine. Drawing on extensive archival research and spatial analysis undertaken over a multiyear collaboration with Nama and Ovaherero traditional authorities, the exhibition traces the lasting impact of colonial violence in three parts: from the ideological roots of racialized imperialism, to the design of the concentration camp, and the ongoing environmental degradation and dispossession affecting Indigenous communities today. In connecting these threads, Forensic Architecture joins historians in positioning the genocidal infrastructure developed by colonial powers in ‘German Southwest Africa’ as an antecedent to the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis. 

A Counter-Archive invites readers into an urgently relevant discussion on the broader origins of genocide within its present-day global manifestations – namely in Palestine. It also contributes to a crucial and ongoing claim for land restitution and reparations in Namibia.

Forensic Architecture will do a lecture-performance on the complexities of this multi-phased investigation in Namibia and the challenges of working with archival material that re-enacts the colonial violence perpetrated at the time. They will share insight into their working methodologies and expand on the central role that oral testimonies of descendants of survivors of the genocide play in the reconstruction of histories that have been expressly downplayed and distorted by Western powers throughout the 20th century.