Following a screening of Forensic Architecture’s The Killing of Mark Duggan (2019) and an introduction by FA’s Nicholas Masterton, I acted as respondent at this event organised by The Bartlett Screening Room on 3 November 2021.

Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths University of London specialising in a form of spatial practice described as ‘investigative aesthetics’. This methodology sets out to question the production of evidence and the distortion of facts through both technologies and systems of knowledge production.

In August 2011 Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in Tottenham, North London. The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) informed the UK media that Duggan was killed with a gun in his hand after he shot and injured an officer. This was immediately questioned by his family and local community who gathered at the Tottenham police station. Protests in Tottenham amplified quickly and spread into a countrywide uprising widely labelled as the ‘London riots’. Over the course of 7 days huge numbers of police were deployed in paramilitary style riot gear and over 3000 people were arrested across the UK.

Forensic Architecture’s vital investigation takes place seven years later and interrogates the evidence: police officers accounts, video material, and material objects. Contradictions and questions in the perceived narrative are revealed through careful investigation. This project acts as a key document in the history of UK police brutality and discrimination against Black Londoners and becomes part of Forensic Architecture’s long running series of investigations into global human rights abuses.

Find out more: ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/events/2021/nov/bartlett-screening-room