At Sea ← Forensic Architecture

SP.4 Escaping Libya's Detention Industry · Supported Project ↗

Date of Incident: None
Location: Libya
Forums: Legal Process, Human Rights Report
An FA-supported project by: Forensis
Summary: Countless migrants and refugees remain trapped in Libya’s network of brutal detention centres, tortured and mistreated. Through interviews with survivors and local experts, Forensis traces the evolution of state-affiliated detention centres out of people-trafficking networks, and their entanglement with EU support.

Date: October 2023 – January 2024
Summary: Gaza’s historic port was repeatedly attacked and progressively destroyed by Israeli forces between October 2023 and January 2024, along with the majority of Palestinian fishing vessels docked within it. FA was commissioned to establish a timeline of visual evidence of the port’s destruction, including the destruction of two fishing vessels belonging to the Al-Hassi family.

Date of Incident: March 2020 – Ongoing
Location: Aegean Sea
Forums: Legal Process, Human Rights Report, Media, Parliamentary Inquiry, Web Platform
In Partnership With: Forensis
Summary: Asylum seekers crossing the Aegean Sea are intercepted within Greek waters or arrested after they arrive on Greek shores, beaten, stripped of their possessions, and then forcefully loaded onto life rafts and left to drift back to the Turkish coast. FA/Forensis verified and mapped evidence for over 2000 such ‘drift-backs’, demonstrating the scale of this violent and illegal border defence practice.

Date of Incident: 13 Jun 2023 – 14 Jun 2023
Location: Mediterranean Sea, Greece
Forums: Media, Web Platform
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: On 14 June 2023, a boat carrying hundreds of migrants sank inside the Greek search and rescue zone in the Mediterranean Sea—the deadliest migrant shipwreck in recent history. Our digital reconstruction of the boat and mapping of its trajectory reveal inconsistencies in the Hellenic Coast Guard’s (HCG) account and indicate that over 600 people drowned as the result of a failed towing by the HCG.

Date of Incident: 28 Oct 2015
Location: Aegean Sea, Lesvos
Forums: Exhibition, Media
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: The death of more than 40 people off the coast of Lesvos in October 2015 was the single deadliest incident in Europe's 'long summer of migration'. One of the survivors, Amel Alzakout, recorded the shipwreck on a waterproof wrist camera. Her footage provides a unique, situated perspective of this tragic event at the threshold of Europe.

Date of Incident: 01 Nov 2018
Location: Central Mediterranean
Forums: Legal Process, United Nations
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: Five months after Italy began to close its ports to migrants rescued at sea, a vessel carrying 93 people was spotted in the southern Mediterranean. The Italian and Libyan Coast Guards enlisted a private merchant ship to rescue the migrants and forcefully return them to Libya. Using tracking data and testimonies, Forensic Oceanography exposed a new mode of privatised border security.

Date of Incident: 06 Nov 2017
Location: Mediterranean Sea
Forums: Legal Process, Exhibition
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: When the Libyan coastguard interrupted a rescue operation by the NGO Sea Watch, at least twenty migrants lost their lives, and more were ‘pulled back’ to inhumane detention in Libya. Forensic Oceanography shone a light on the practices of a coastguard funded and trained by the Italian government.

Date of Incident: 02 Aug 2017
Location: Mediterranean Sea
Forums: Legal Process, Exhibition
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: The Iuventa has rescued over ten thousand people from the Mediterranean since it began operating in 2016. When the vessel was impounded by Italian authorities under suspicion of collusion with people smugglers, we used video evidence and meteorological data to refute the allegations.

Date of Incident: 12 Apr 2015 – 18 Apr 2015
Location: Mediterranean Sea
Forums: Exhibition, Human Rights Report
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: Changing EU policies toward the rescue of migrants resulted in over a thousand deaths in the Mediterranean in the space of one week. Working with survivors and available shipping data, we recreated the incidents and explored the consequences of making rescue vessels out of commercial ships.

Date of Incident: 27 Mar 2011 – 10 Apr 2011
Location: Mediterranean Sea
Forums: Legal Process, Exhibition
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: A migrants’ boat was left drifting for two weeks in NATO-monitored waters, its presence known to the Italian coastguard and other nearby vessels. Sixty-three people died. Using an array of sensing technologies—thermal cameras, radar, and tracking—Forensic Oceanography mapped the path of the boat.