X-rays – Seeing the Invisible: Art, Evidence and War Crimes (Talk & Workshop)

With: Jana Lozanoska (Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Rights and International Law and Program Head, Al-Quds Bard College for Arts and Sciences, MK/PS)
When: Friday, November 15, 2024, 19:00-21:00
Where: Stadtwerkstatt, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 11/13, 10178 Berlin.

Two centuries after their discovery, X-rays continue to be used in medical diagnostics/imaging and in the visual arts. They have played an important role in investigations in Latin America (mid-1980s) and ex-Yugoslavia (1990s) to determine the causes of death and injury, and in the exhumation and recovery of mass graves to prove war crimes and genocide in Srebrenica. This talk and workshop will cover the use of X-rays in the visual arts and as evidence of war crimes in forensic investigations and prosecutions.

About the Project
X-rays were discovered by the German physicist Wilhlem Conrad Röntgen on November, 8th 1895, and had steered much fascination and excitement for the possibility of medicine and science to ponder into the human body, cure diseases and identify foreign objects (bullets). The scientific euphoria regarding the X-rays discovery had been accompanied by the public euphoria of producing numerous art and popular illustrations, which nowadays may be found at the Röntgen Museum in Remscheid on display. From a historical perspective the presentation also discusses the X-rays radiation misuse during the National Socialism in castration and forced sterilization policies. The medical atrocities committed have prompted the normative developments of Genocide Convention (1948) and the definition of genocide with one of the genocidal acts to include “[i]mposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” (Article, II (d)).

Two centuries after its discovery X-rays are still used in medical diagnostic/imaging and in visual arts. Amidst growing production of visual evidence, X-rays images as forensic evidence are still relevant forms of evidence both in national jurisdictions and somewhat with limited focus in international criminal prosecutions. X-rays technology and images as forensic evidence has played an important role during the international forensic investigations in Latin America (mid-1980s) and ex-Yugoslavia (1990s) in determining the causes of death, injury and in exhumations and recovery of mass graves in proving war crimes and genocide in Srebrenica (International Criminal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia, Krstic case).

The shifting nature of human rights investigation and documentation has increased the actors and research agencies on the international stage that utilize novel methods and approaches in (re) construction of evidence of human rights abuses, while at the same time the field of X-rays imaging has not been given sufficient practical and theoretical focus. For that purpose the talk and the workshop critically engages with these novel approaches of (re)construction of evidence. In specific with the work of Forensic Architecture on counter forensics, and proposes re-thinking of the spatiality in forensics and in particular X-rays images, through a visual art exhibition “Radiography” (1990) by the Australian photographer and artist Henry Lewis.

Talk & Workshop
The presentation and the workshop conceptualizes X-rays as abstract technical images and borrows from media and culture theorist Vilém Flusser the notion of X-rays images as “elitist technical images” which require “deciphering” by an expert witness and techno-imagination in contextualizing and conceptualizing of X-ray spatiality.

In that direction the talk and the workshop aim to familiarize the participants with the nature, use of X-rays technology and images in visual arts and as evidence of war crimes through forensic investigations and prosecutions. The presentation and the workshop from an interdisciplinary perspective aim to tackle several questions related to the visuality, objectivity, representation and interpretation of X-rays images as evidence of international crimes on the one hand and on the other hand as X-rays images in the visual arts by identifying their differences and commonalities in understanding their aesthetic and phenomenological nature. For that aim it will simultaneously examine the artwork of “Radiography” (1990) exhibition and the International Criminal Court Lubanga case involving the recruitment of child soldiers.

Speaker

Jana Lozanoska
Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Rights and International Law and Program Head, Al-Quds Bard College for Arts and Sciences, MK/PS

Jana Lozanoska, teaches human rights and international law, she has obtained her doctorate degree from the United Nations University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica with focus on Hannah Arendt’s political theory and principle of human dignity as rethinking of human rights. She holds an LL.M degree in international humanitarian law from the University of Geneva and Graduate Institute for International Studies, Switzerland. Her research interests are at the intersection of human rights, international criminal law, visuality, and technology. Currently, she is working on research related to X-rays as evidence in front of the International Criminal Court by examining their nature as court evidence on the one hand and as evidence in art-exhibitions on the other hand, in formulating phenomenological aesthetics of X-rays. She has published several manuscripts regarding the interrelation between justice, technology, and temporality. As a lawyer she has submitted several initiatives in front of the Constitutional Court and the Ombudsman in addressing human rights, respect, and protection. Lozanoska also has contributed to the first NGO report to the Human Rights Council Universal Periodic Review, worked for the Maldives Mission at UNOG during the establishment of the Human Rights Council. She has written in several daily newspapers as columnist and frequently published on Res Publica, she has published two poetry books and one short novel “Living Room” that deals with the interaction between painting, photography, politics of identity, and neuroscience, and has been shortlisted for the best novel prize (Utrinski Vesnik) in 2015.