United States of America ← Forensic Architecture

I.106 Chemical Fire at Marathon Refinery

Date of Incident: 24 Aug 2023 – 28 Aug 2023
Location: Garyville, Louisiana, USA
Forums: Media, Web Platform
In Partnership With: The Guardian, Earthjustice, Healthy Gulf, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, The Descendants Project, Boundless Community Action
Summary: When a leaking petrochemical tank at the Marathon Petroleum refinery in Louisiana’s ‘Cancer Alley’ caught fire, it produced a thick plume of toxic smoke that spread for miles over neighbouring communities. Authorities claimed that nearby residents were unaffected, even as reports of severe health impacts emerged. Fearing a cover-up, some of those residents asked FA to investigate.

Date of Incident: 19 Feb 2022
Location: Normandale Park, Portland, Oregon
Forums: Exhibition, Media
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: June 'T-Rex' Knightly was murdered while preparing to protect a racial justice protest, by a perpetrator inspired by toxic rhetoric from right-wing influencers and politicians. Four others were seriously wounded. False statements by Portland’s police after the attack implied the victims provoked the mass shooting. We worked with survivors to reconstruct the event, and challenge the police account.

Date of Incident: 02 Jun 2020
Location: Portland, Oregon, USA
Forums: Legal Process, Exhibition, Media
Commissioned By: Self-Initiated
Summary: Over the summer of 2020, Portland's police force deployed large amounts of tear gas to suppress local demonstrations against racialised police violence. Focusing on a single representative day—2 June 2020—we simulated the path of the toxic tear gas clouds as they spread widely across the city centre, demonstrating that the concentration levels were in serious excess of recognised safe thresholds.

Date of Incident: 1718 – Ongoing
Location: 'Death Alley', Louisiana, USA
Forums: Legal Process, United Nations, Exhibition, Media, Web Platform
In Partnership With: RISE St. James
Summary: A stretch of the Mississippi River once called 'Plantation Country' is now the 'Petrochemical Corridor', known to those who breathe its toxic air as 'Death Alley'. Using advanced techniques in cartography and fluid dynamics, we worked to support local demands for accountability and reparations.

Date of Incident: 25 May 2020 – Ongoing
Location: Minneapolis, MN and across the US
Forums: United Nations, Web Platform
In Partnership With: Bellingcat
Summary: Protests against racialized police violence have swept the US, following the killings of George Floyd and others. Those protests have themselves been met with egregious brutality by police. With Bellingcat, we built a comprehensive archive of that systemic violence, to support accountability efforts.

Date of Incident: Various
Location: Various
Forums: Exhibition, Media
In Partnership With: Bellingcat, Amnesty International, Open source contributors
Summary: Since 2018, Forensic Architecture has been working with ‘synthetic images’—photorealistic digital renderings of 3D models—to train machine learning classifiers. Model Zoo includes a growing collection of 3D models of munitions and weapons, as well as the different classifiers trained to identify them making a catalogue of some of the most horrific weapons used in conflict today.

Date of Incident: 14 Jul 2018
Location: South Shore, Chicago
Forums: Exhibition
In Partnership With: Invisible Institute
Summary: When police shot Harith Augustus to death not far from his South Shore barbershop, the Chicago police called it a legitimate 'split-second' decision. We unpacked that split second at six different time scales, from milliseconds to years. Our investigation uncovered multiple violations by Chicago police, including, not for the first time, withholding critical video evidence from the public.

Date: 14 May 2019
Summary: Warren B. Kanders, formerly vice chair of the board of trustees of New York's Whitney Museum, is connected to the US-based manufacturer Sierra Bullets. Sierra's 'Matchking' bullet is used by military snipers around the world. We traced a line from a manufacturing plant in Missouri to Gaza's eastern border, connecting Kanders to violence committed there against Palestinians by the Israeli army.

Date of Incident: 26 Nov 2018
Location: Tijuana-San Diego border, US/Mexico; Gaza, Palestine; and around the world
Forums: Exhibition, Media
In Partnership With: Praxis Films
Summary: When US border agents fired tear gas grenades at civilians, including children, photographs linked the grenades to the Safariland Group, which is owned by Warren B. Kanders, the vice chair of the board of trustees of the Whitney Museum of American Art. In response to our invitation to the Whitney Biennial 2019, we developed machine learning classifiers to search for Safariland munitions online.