seeing beyond the frame(s)

about this contribution

On December 1, 2018, on the margins of a gilets jaunes protest in Marseille, 80-year-old Zineb Redouane was struck in the face by a tear gas grenade as she was standing at the window of her fourth-floor apartment. The following day, she died in hospital.

In partnership with the French investigative media organization Disclose, the London-based research agency Forensic Architecture produced a counter-investigation into the circumstances of her death. The resulting report, published in video format in December 2020, provided evidence of the responsibility of the French police for her killing.

In the proposed publication, the lead researcher on the case for Forensic Architecture and the independent journalist / filmmaker who together authored the report use it as a case-study to discuss the methodology of image-to-space analysis for citizen investigations.

By revisiting the case, the publication brings questions of methods and techniques of visual analysis to the foreground, in an effort to discuss the benefits, as well as the limitations, of using such tools in the particular research framework of a citizen investigation: namely, one in which access to data is limited by underlying structures of power, and where the question of seeing beyond the established frame(s)—of images, of discourses—forms the primary research challenge.

By unpacking the argument presented in the counter-investigation of Zineb Redouane’s killing, the publication uses the video.able format to deploy an multilayered, visual explanation of the techniques pioneered by Forensic Architecture to produce its investigative reports. In so doing, the aim of the publication is to foster the development, and widespread adoption, of open-source visual techniques for citizen investigations.