Animated Memories A case study of the animated documentary Saydnaya – Inside a

Syrian Torture Prison (2016) and its potential within social

memory

Melina Scheuermann

Department of Media Stuides

Master Thesis 30 ECTS credits

Cinema Studies

Master’s Programme Cinema Studies (120 ECTS credits)

Spring 2019

Supervisor: Trond Lundemo

Animated Memories

A case study of the animated documentary Saydnaya – Inside a Syria

Torture Prison (2016) and its potential within social memory

Melina Scheuermann

Abstract

Through its ability to create images of non-representable incidents animation expands the range and

depth of what documentary can represent and how. This master thesis investigates the potential of

animated documentary within social memory exemplified by the interactive animated documentary

Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison (Forensic Architecture, 2016). By applying a feminist spatial

approach, I aim to contribute to the understanding of the role of animated documentary images within

social memory.

Embodied and haptic spectatorship as well as haptic materiality are crucial in this case study due to the

nature of the virtual screen images and interactive navigation (compared to montage) of the architectural

3D model. Testimonies and evidence presented in documentary film require a discursive establishment

of truth. Indexicality is discussed in this regard and eventually a theoretical shift towards movement

suggested. I demonstrate that Saydnaya extends the strategies in animated documentary that have been

in focus so far, such as representing mental states and subjective experiences, by deploying methods of

forensic aesthetics. This opens up novel ways to establish truth claims and persuasion in documentary

filmmaking that require future research.

Keywords

Animated documentary, social memory, testimony, forensic aesthetics, haptic spectatorship, haptic

materiality, indexicality, movement, montage, navigation

Contents

1. Introduction .................................................................................... 1

1.1. Thesis outline ........................................................................................... 4

1.2. Case study ............................................................................................... 5

2. Methodology ................................................................................... 7

2.1. Spatial cinema .......................................................................................... 9

3. Theoretical framework .................................................................. 13

3.1. Social memory .........................................................................................13

3.1.1. Cinema and social memory ..................................................................17

3.1.2. Trauma .............................................................................................19

3.2. Animated documentary .............................................................................22

4. (Re)Modelling Saydnaya ............................................................... 26

4.1. Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International ..........................................26

4.2. Memory prisons .......................................................................................29

5. Experiencing Saydnaya ................................................................. 33

5.1. Entering Saydnaya ...................................................................................33

5.2. Montage and navigation ............................................................................33

5.3. Haptic spectatorship .................................................................................38

5.4. Haptic materiality .....................................................................................41

5.5. Re-animations and re-enactments ..............................................................46

5.6. Embodied spectatorship ............................................................................48

6. Claiming truth: testimony and evidence ........................................ 51

6.1. Earwitness testimony ................................................................................51

6.2. Sound as evidence ...................................................................................52

6.3. Indexicality and movement........................................................................54

6.4. Testimony and relative truth ......................................................................57

6.5. (Un)Certain images ..................................................................................59

6.6. Fake news ...............................................................................................62

7. Conclusions ................................................................................... 65

Filmography .......................................................................................... 69

Artworks ............................................................................................... 69

Bibliography .......................................................................................... 70

List of figures Fig. 1 Overlapping tabs .........................................................................................41

Fig. 2 Transparent model .......................................................................................44

Fig. 3 Opaque model .............................................................................................44

Fig. 4 Body construction and rotatable room ............................................................45

Fig. 5 Pixel grid ....................................................................................................45

Fig. 6 Blindfolded ..................................................................................................47

Fig. 7 Earshot ......................................................................................................53

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1. Introduction

How can we depict what we cannot see? This question has accompanied me in my previous

research through today.1 Animated documentaries engage precisely with the issue of visibility.

Animation has the ability to create images of incidents that are not available through

photographic media for one reason or the other; may it be an instance in which no archival

footage exists (anymore) or phenomena that cannot be perceived through our visual sense such

as mental or emotional states. Thus, animation expands the range and depth of what

documentary can represent and how it represents it. By making otherwise invisible perspectives

available animated documentary bears the opportunity to challenge and add nuance to existing

topoi within (visual) discourses.2

Discourses of social memory constitute historical pasts of society and thereby society’s

collective identity and future orientation. Film has become an important medium to

communicate and negotiate our pasts as fictional as well as non-fictional accounts. In the mid-

1990s technological innovations, especially the emergence of computer-generated images

(CGI), proliferated and democratised the use of animation in film. The history of animated

documentaries goes back to the very beginnings of cinema itself but since the end of the 20th

century this film genre has gained ground in mainstream cinema. Waltz with Bashir (2008) by

Ari Folman and Life, Animated (2016) by Roger Ross Williams based on the book by Ron

Suskind have reached wide audiences and pulled the genre of animated documentary out of the

niche and more into the popular realm. As an increasingly established form within discourses,

animated documentary has also become relevant to social memory.

1 Melina Scheuermann, ‘Bilder des Alltäglichen Im Krieg. Private Fotografien von Bundeswehrsoldat*innen Aus

Dem ISAF-Einsatz in Afghanistan’, Visual History - Online Nachschlagewerk für die Historische

Bildforschung, accessed January 19, 2019, https://www.visual-history.de/2018/07/19/bilder-des-alltaeglichen-

im-krieg/. 2 Erkki Huhtamo coined the term topos within media studies and media archaeology. Huhtamo defines a topos as

a stereotypical formula that is evoked again and again in different forms and for different purposes. In such topoi

cultural desires are expressed and as topoi employ traditional elements of “memory banks” they mold the

meanings of cultural objects. As discursive meaning processors, topoi can also serve persuasive and rhetorical

goals within the media industry. Topoi manifest in various forms, ranging from literary over visual topoi to even

designs such as user interfaces. Topoi can also shift from one media (form) to another. (Erkki Huhtamo,

‘Dismanteling the Fairy Engine. Media Archaeology as Topos Study’, in Media Archaeology. Approaches,

Applications, and Implications., ed. Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California

Press, 2011), 28, 34.)

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Animated documentary allows telling stories differently than live action film does.

Therefore, the question arises, if and how animated documentaries challenge predominating

historical topoi, narratives and rhetoric by allowing for other perspectives but also offering

different film forms. If we remain in a binary logic of dominant and oppositional forms

animated documentary might remain in the inferior position of the subversive. Instead, I argue

it is more useful to pay attention to the characteristic shifts of social memory and the ways how

public truths are established in relation to animated documentary images. Far from praising

animated documentary as the radical force that transforms the way history is written, I

understand the emergence, establishment and proliferation of animated documentary as deeply

intertwined with social preconditions and modifications that allow and determine this form of

images to engage in the process of social memory. Therefore, it is not only relevant to ask what

is remembered but also how it is remembered and thus in what ways (hi-)stories are told and

what characteristics the images created have.

This appears relevant because the expansion of representations by animated

documentary is furthermore facilitated by the way that animation partially releases

documentary from its visual indexical relationship with reality.3 While animated documentary

images might uphold the indexical relationship on the level of sound, the relationship to a

physically manifested reality that can be captured by the visual sense and/or camera – e.g. in

the form of a building, a street, an object – can be overridden. Indexical relationships are closely

linked to notions of authenticity. Thus, animation questions concepts of realism, truth and

testimony in documentary filmmaking.4 This loosened indexical relationship calls for a re-

valuation of what is conceived as true and thus, what and how it is remembered by societies.

This master thesis aims to explore the potential of animated documentary within social

memory due to its ability to (re)construct otherwise unavailable images as well as its medium-

specific forms through the case study of Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison (2016).

This interactive animated documentary has been produced by the research agency and activist

network Forensic Architecture in collaboration with Amnesty International. Based on the

memories and testimonies of five survivors of the torture prison in the Syrian town of Saydnaya,

the prison building is remodelled in a 3D architectural modelling software. The documentary is

available online and the viewer can navigate through the building and watch several clips of the

3 Annabelle Honess Roe, Animated Documentary (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 4 Roe, Animated Documentary, 3.

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interviews with the former detainees, as well as the reconstruction process of the model itself

at different locations within the animated model.5

As briefly addressed above, the relationships between image, sound and reality are of

specific interest in animated documentary. This counts for Saydnaya especially, as the

(re)construction of the prison is foremost based on the auditive memory of the former detainees.

Furthermore, I have chosen this case study because it questions the often-held view that

animation’s primary quality in documentary film is the representation of subjective experiences

on a more abstract and metaphorical level. This is the case for many animated documentaries

and their success is undoubted. Nevertheless, Saydnaya applies animation and its technology in

a different way. Forensic Architecture based at Goldsmith University in London, reintroduces

the term of forensis and establishes forensic aesthetics; comprehending aesthetic methods as

investigative tools and not only representational means. This particular usage of animation

technology within documentary filmmaking has been hitherto neglected by scholars, outside of

the research agency.

The study of social memory – how groups of people and institutions select, interpret

and negotiate memories that serve the sense of a collectively shared past and identity – is a

relatively new and interdisciplinary research area that stretches from history to anthropology,

psychology, sociology and – as in this case – media and film studies. Along with Giuliana

Bruno’s reflections on memory in relation to film, pivotal texts for this Master’s thesis include

Andreas Huyssen’s Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (2003) as his

analysis on social memory and its cultural implications are rooted in studies of architecture and

city spaces, as well as Maurice Halbwachs’ On Collective Memory (1924) which has been a

ground-breaking contribution to the study of collectively shared memory. Halbwachs has been

a point of reference for much research referred to in this thesis. Relevant contributions to the

relation between film, media and social memory can be found in edited volumes by Susannah

Radstone and Bill Schwarz; and by Ina Blom, Trond Lundemo and Eivind Røssaak.6 I want to

pay particular attention on Radstone’s article about what she terms cinema/memory, that will

find closer examination in the chapter following on social memory.7

5 Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International, Saydnaya - Inside a Syrian Torture Prison, accessed May 19,

2019, https://saydnaya.amnesty.org/. 6 Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz, ed., Memory : Histories, Theories, Debates (New York: Fordham

University Press, 2010); Ina Blom, Trond Lundemo, and Eivind Røssaak, ed., Memory in Motion: Archives,

Technology, and the Social, (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017). 7 Susannah Radstone, ‘Cinema and Memory’, in Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates, ed. Susannah

Radstone and Bill Schwarz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 325-42.

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Methodologically, this thesis applies a spatial approach as practised by Giuliana Bruno

in her works Streetwalking on a Ruined Map (1993) and Atlas of Emotion (2002).8 Bruno’s

feminist and media archaeological approach seeks to read history and discourse against the

grain and therefore offer new possibilities for understanding our past. Bruno connects or rather

unravels the connections between film, geography, architecture and the body. The bodily aspect

leads us to embodied spectatorship and the concept of haptics that we can also find in writings

by Gilles Deleuze and Laura Marks.9 While Bruno’s work on spatiality presents the overall

methodological framework, haptics are central to the formal analysis of the case study.

Additionally, Anne Friedberg’s discussion of the virtual window and its architectural and

cinematic implications connect to haptics through its focus on the materiality of images.10

The research on animated documentary conducted so far has a strong focus on

representational matters, and whilst they play a role in this study, they are not central to the

analysis.11 I assume that animated documentaries not only “add” to the discursive map by telling

previously inaccessible stories, but rather, that they partake in characteristic transformations of

the conception, the topography, of social memory. The concepts of forensis and forensic

aesthetics are especially interesting in this regard. By shifting the focus to form and spatiality

as well as haptic images and embodied experiences, I aim to contribute to a research field that

seeks to understand the complex relationships between contemporary social memory and film,

and media more generally.

1.1. Thesis outline

After introducing the case study, my research questions and the methodology, two thematically

structured chapters on social memory and animated documentary will follow. Here I will

summarize key theoretical approaches, review relevant literature and position myself within

that established theoretical framework. The analysis of the case study is separated into three

chapters. To begin with, Saydnaya is situated in the context of human rights activism and

academia and crucial concepts such as forensic aesthetics are explained in the chapter

8 Giuliana Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari (Princeton,

New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1993); Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture,

and Film (New York: Verso, 2002). 9 Gilles Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2017); Laura

U. Marks, Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

2002). 10 Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2006). 11 See for example Agnieszka Piotrowska, ‘Animating the Real: A Case Study’, Animation 6, no. 3 (November

2011): 335–51.

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4. (Re)Modelling Saydnaya. Furthermore, we learn about the construction of the model of the

prison based on the memory of and testimony by the former detainees. Here, the conjunction

of memory, architecture and film find an evident and practically applied manifestation. The

formal analysis of the interactive documentary will follow; focusing on the concept of montage

in relation to the navigation through the animated architectural model of Saydnaya prison,

haptic and embodied spectatorship as well as the material qualities of animated images in

chapter 5. Experiencing Saydnaya. The last analysis chapter 6. Claiming truth: testimony and

evidence deals mainly with the role of sound for both testimony and film; starting off from the

case of Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison but eventually leading to a broader

discussion of the concept of indexicality. In this regard, I will give a brief summary and

evaluation of the news coverage and the political consequences and reactions that Saydnaya has

provoked. All conclusions will be displayed in the final chapter.

1.2. Case study

The case study I’ve chosen for this Master’s research is the interactive documentary project

(online website) Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison (2016), available in English and

Arabic, by Lawrence Abu Hamdan and Forensic Architecture. Forensic Architecture is a

research agency based at the Goldsmith University in London. The team consists of architects,

visual culture scholars, filmmakers, artists, animators and journalists. It investigates human

rights violations and war crimes by using architectural and animation technology such as

navigable 3D models of sites of conflict and interactive cartographies. Forensic Architecture

undertakes architectural and media research on behalf of or in collaboration with international

prosecutors, human rights organisations and political and environmental justice groups.

In the case of Saydnaya Forensic Architecture collaborated with Amnesty International.

Based on interviews with former detainees of the torture prison in Saydnaya, the prison is

reconstructed by means of an architectural 3D modelling software. No photographic evidence

of this prison exists except a single satellite image, and thus, the entire reconstruction is based

on the memories of the prisoners. One can “walk” through the prison; either watching different

testimonies at one site, or, following one witness’s narrative. The link between memory, film

and architecture is obvious in this case study. The novel element here is animation (a) as means

of constructing an architectural building, (b) as means to visualize (auditive) memories and (c)

as means to create a virtual space the viewer can move within in the sense of navigating through

the space by digital screen device.

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The analysis of Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison will include a discussion of

the importance of sound in relation to memory and its role in animated documentary, ideas of

haptic embodiment through animation and refer to re-enactments of traumatic events in

documentary film. In this regard, the recollection of memories through architecture and its 3D-

remodelling becomes relevant too. Furthermore, the rise of forensis as a framework and method

for the making and analysis of cinematic material will be discussed.12

There is a focus on subjective experience and the metaphorical potentials of animation

in the documentary context. The concept of forensis offers a possibility to analyse a rather

underacknowledged quality of animation as a practice that focuses on the materiality and

technical aspects of images and sounds. Through this focus on materiality, it becomes possible

to interconnect or cross-reference the subjective testimonies of witnesses and the “testimonies”

of sound and image recordings through digital animation technologies. Thus, witnessing and

testimonies become questioned and unravelled through such practice. The overall focus on

traumatic memories in relation to war is not simply the result of my personal interest but finds

its reason in a large number of animated documentaries that deal with trauma and human rights

violations enabled through the possibilities of animated documentary. Alongside this, trauma

has also played a central role in the conceptualisation and practised construction of social

memory, something upon which I will elaborate in the theoretical framework.

12 Forensic Architecture et al., Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014).

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2. Methodology

Following, I will present my research questions and discuss the applied methodology of this

thesis as well as its ontological and epistemological implications. By shifting the focus from

mainly narrative and representational issues towards more social-oriented realms of animated

documentary, this Master’s thesis raises the following questions:

• What are the potentials of the animated documentary Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian

Torture Prison (2016) to create an impact on rhetoric, narratives, forms and images

in social memory?

• Has animated documentary transformed the formation of social memory and public

truths in contemporary Western societies, and if yes, in what ways?

In order to answer these questions, I will follow Giuliana Bruno’s spatial and feminist approach

marking her entire work but extensively presented by her in Streetwalking on a Ruined Map

(1993) and Atlas of Emotion (2002).13 Her approach provides alternative methods for the

production and mobilization of social and political history,14 especially those that can only be

approached through personal experience such as mental and bodily trauma.15 Therefore, the

employment of spatial approaches appears as a promising way to conceptualise animated

documentary in relation to social memory.

Giuliana Bruno’s cultural study Streetwalking on a Ruined Map introduces a spatial

approach towards (film) historiography, and its challenges as posed by feminist theory, film

theory and history. She herself describes her work as a (filmic) palimpsest that stretches across

a broad intersectional and cultural field where amongst others film, art history, architecture and

photography meet.16 While Bruno offers a minute microhistorical study on Elvira Notari (1875-

1946) – one of Italy’s first and most prolific filmmakers and the driving force of the production

company Dora Films (Naples, 1906- 1930) – she simultaneously maps out epistemological

paradigms.17 Connecting detailed and in-depth analysis with what she calls “panoramic

13 Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map; Bruno, Atlas of Emotion. 14 Paulette Singley, ‘Review of Streetwalking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira

Notari, by Giuliana Bruno’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 54, no. 2 (1995): 249. 15 Laura U. Marks, ‘Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture and Film’, Screen 44, no. 3

(October 2003): 342. 16 Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, 3-4. 17 Ibid., 3.

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vision”18 is a strength of Bruno’s work. Neither does she get lost in a single analysis that can’t

claim any further validity outside its own territory nor do the epistemological claims appear

rootless or unfounded.

Apart from the critical study Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, Bruno also investigates

the interconnection of migration (motion) with cinema, the city and the architecture in another

article on the production house Notari.19 By analysing modes of production, distribution and

reception in their spatial context – here Naples and New York – and their cinematic

representations, which are understood as intertwined and shaping each other, Bruno situates the

amateur films of Italian immigrants in New York as elements of social memory.

Bruno describes her approach as a “gesture toward the reappropriation of geography in

history.”20 This rewriting of film history through the spatial lens underscores the existence of

the woman film pioneer lost in a male-dominated culture by retracing her and her work in the

context of other invisible women, etc. in cultural and artistic production. Thus, the spatial

approach, and the reappropriation of geography, is a useful tool to enable (re)conceptualizations

of history and social memory that challenge hegemonic dominance. Bruno aims to reclaim

marginality, difference and suppressed knowledge; with the latter referring to Foucault’s idea

of “discursive sleep” that is actualised through the suppression of knowledge and the censorial

dispositive.21 This premise has eventually led to her working on the margins, the lacunae,

through which other texts have become visible.22

Discursive blind spots, lacunae, can be conceptualized as borders of discourses of social

memory and public truths, as borders of visibility. Animated documentaries such as Saydnaya

work on these borders by (re)constructing destroyed and “lost” parts; thereby remediating

available discursive elements such as stories, (moving) images, texts. The expansion of

historical narratives enabled through animated documentary can be understood as a film form

that opened up previously barred landscapes that we can metaphorically walk through.

Simultaneously, I claim that the documentary Saydnaya, and animated documentaries

generally, do not merely “add” narratives to the discourse but rather calls for another kind of

topography of the discursive map of social memory.

18 Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, 3. 19 Giuliana Bruno, ‘City Views: The Voyage of Film Images.’, in Mediated Ethnicity. New Italian-American

Cinema., ed. Giuliana Muscio et al. (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2010), 77–92. 20 Bruno, Streetwalking on a Ruined Map, 4-5. 21 Ibid., 5, 149. 22 Ibid., 3.

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2.1. Spatial cinema

In order to understand the spatial approach applied here, we need to examine Bruno’s spatial

understanding of cinema more closely. Bruno aims to move from an ontology of cinema located

with spectacle, ocularcentrism and the gaze towards one based in spatiality and motion.23 Much

of her spatial understanding is based upon the close relationship between architecture and

cinema. While cinema as well as architecture have been widely conceptualized as visual media,

in Atlas of Emotion she attempts to conceptualize them as haptic, tactile and spatial matters.24

Both moving images and certain architectonic sites, such as sites of transit that changed the

relationship between spatial perception and bodily motion, like arcades, department stores and

pavilions of exhibition halls emerged at the eve of modernity concurrently.25 Another linkage

and interplay between architecture and cinema, Bruno draws back to Sergei Eistenstein’s article

Montage and Architecture that was written in the late 1930s.26 Pivotal for this connection is the

idea of a moving spectator for both cinema and architecture. Eisenstein uses the term path to

describe how the eyes and mind of the spectator follow an imaginary path across multiple,

spatially and temporally disparate phenomena that are arranged in a certain temporal sequence

and meaningful manner, arranged in a montage.27 Even though the filmic spectator is seemingly

static, she traverses multiple times and sites and her navigation connects those different sites

and times.28 In architecture the spectator also absorbs and connects visual spaces while

wandering through a building; thus, “[t]he promenade is the main link between the architectural

ensemble and film.”29 Furthermore, they “share the framing of space and succession of sites

that are organized as shots from different viewpoints.”30 Eventually, editing and montage are

joint elements because “like film, architecture – apparently static – is shaped by the montage of

spectatorial movements.”31 Therefore, embodiment is involved in the relation between film and

architecture because both are based on the inscription of an observer or spectator in the site.32

The effect of site-seeing is produced when architectural sites are mobilized and scenically

23 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 15. cf. Marks, ‘Review: Guiliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion’, 337. 24 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 6, 15. 25 Ibid., 17. 26 Sergei M. Eisenstein, Yve-Alain Bois, and Michael Glenny, ‘Montage and Architecture’, Assemblage, no. 10

(1989): 116. 27 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 55. 28 Ibid., 56. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid.

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assembled (put in montage); film creates a similar effect by offering a space the viewer can

wander around.33

De Certeau also understands space as a “practised place” and stories or narrations

(assemblages of sites and times) as crucial elements of spatial operations.34 De Certeau

distinguishes between two types of descriptions, the map and the tour. Maps, as based on the

action of seeing, are plane projections of totalizing observations. Tours, as based on the action

of walking, are thus an itinerary, or a discursive series of (spatial) operations. 35 While this

binary opposition might be valid in the context of an actual city space, Bruno contests this

binary opposition when she translates De Certeau’s concept to cinema. Bruno argues that

cinematic description does not oscillate between seeing and going but that motion pictures are

precisely the synthesis of seeing and going – motion pictures are the site where “seeing is

going.”36

This embodied experience of moving images leads us to the haptic cinema Bruno

establishes. In Atlas of Emotion she points out, and repeatedly applies, the etymological

connections between motion and emotion (stemming from emovere, composed from movere,

“to move” and e, “out”).37 She developes the term of emotion to the haptic affect of transport

by pointing out its level of meanings that describe “moving out” and “transference from one

place to another”.38 This leads her to a conceptualisation of an embodied and haptic cinema:

again tracing the etymological roots of the word cinema, Greek kinema, that connotes both

motion and emotion39 Bruno concludes:

It [cinema] implies more than the movement of bodies and objects as imprinted in the change of film frames and shots, the flow of camera movement, or any other kind of shift in viewpoint. Cinematic space moves not only through time and space or narrative development but through inner space. Film moves, fundamentally “moves” us, with its ability to render affects and, in turn, to affect.40

Thus, a cinematic work is haptic in the sense that it invites the viewer metaphorically to move

or travel which, in turn, give rise to subjective, emotional responses.41

But how do cinema, architecture and memory come together? Bruno states that the art

of memory has always been a matter of mapping space and that it was also a traditionally

33 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 59. 34 Michel De Certeau and Steven Rendall, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: Universtity of California Press,

1984), 117. 35 De Certeau, 119. 36 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 245 (highlighting by original author). 37 Ibid., 6. 38 Ibid. 39 Ibid., 7. 40 Ibid. 41 Marks, ‘Review: Guiliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion’, 340.

Scheuermann 11

architectural affair. Bruno describes how a discourse can be remembered as located on site as

well as in sequence: one mentally walks around a building, setting up every room with an image.

Then one retraverses the building, moving around the space again, revisiting all the rooms that

have been fitted out with images. In other words, when we recollect memories, we mentally

travel through spaces that we have once inhabited. “Conceived in this way”, Bruno writes that

“memories are motion pictures.” 42 This idea is based on the Roman philosophers Quintilian and

Cicero; and Cicero’s famous mnemonic technique of “memory palaces” will find use later in

the analysis of the creation process of the animated 3D model (see chapter 4.2 Memory prisons)

The different layers of memory writing on a site can be effaced, but also written over

and over again. For example, when one remembers that is not merely recollection of the past

but an active, embodied process in the present. In this sense the constant re-writing of memory,

“places are the site of mnemonic palimpsest.”43 Those “mental walks” of memory affect the

body of the spectator/stroller and can initiate somatic responses and emotions.44 When watching

a film, we (re)visit different sites in the sense that memories are mobilized. Memories are

understood as places or sites, both emotionally charged and perceived haptically. To conclude,

a spatial and haptic understanding of moving images and memories can “mobilize social and

political histories, especially those that can only be approached through personal experience.”45

I agree with Roe when she states that “[i]t is always a challenge to historicize the

present.”46 This is a challenge that scholars working on the relatively young research field of

animated documentary have to face. Nevertheless, I argue that it is necessary to research current

developments and practices in the field of media and memory in order to gain a better

understanding of how societies make sense out of their pasts because present memory media

practices will have an impact on how societies imagine their futures. In this sense, this thesis

aims to exemplify the potential impact and analyse the image and narrative rhetoric of animated

documentary in connection to its technology and materiality within social memory through the

case study of Saydnaya. The formal analysis of the film will be sensitive to spatial, architectural

and haptic practices as proposed by Bruno.

42 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 220-221. 43 Ibid., 222. 44 Ibid. 45 Marks, ‘Review: Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion’, 342 46 Annabelle Honess Roe, ‘The Evolution of Animated Documentary’, in New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging

Platforms, Practices and Discourses, ed. Kate Nash, Craig Hight, and Catherine Summerhayes (London, UK:

Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2014), 174.

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I approach my research questions – the potentials anchored in animated documentary –

theoretically. Above I have already introduced the concept of montage and its relation to film

and architecture. In my analysis I interrogate the concept regarding the similarities and

differences between the movement through a filmic space and the interactive, animated space

we encounter in Saydnaya. If and how such virtual space and animated images can be perceived

haptically is a follow-up question that I aim to answer through close analysis of the animated

prison model and the animated sequences of the video clips by means of concepts of haptics

that have been applied to cinema and art.

Furthermore, I critically examine the applicability of concepts that have been used to

analyse other animated documentaries, for example, by Landsman and Bendor in their analysis

of Waltz with Bashir. I scrutinize if the rhetoric and formal strategies at work in that film also

apply to the case of Saydnaya, and if not, what other strategies can be identified. By pointing

out the differences I hope to show that Saydnaya offers strategies of animated documentary and

animation technology that have been rather unacknowledged so far.

In order to shed light on the question if and how animated documentary has transformed

the formation of social memory and public truth I focus on the role of testimony and evidence

in documentary filmmaking; as both play important roles in social memory as well as in

Saydnaya. By analysing testimony’s function within social memory in relation to testimony in

Saydnaya I seek to demonstrate the possibilities of the animated documentary as an element of

social memory of the war in Syria. The believability or trustworthiness of the animated

documentary images is another relevant aspect when it comes to testimony and evidence. This

topic I approach by examining not only through the (degree of) indexicality of the images but

also by reflecting on the usefulness of the concept. The idea of movement of and between images

as an alternative concept arises here and I assess the trustworthiness of the animated images of

Saydnaya by means of those two concepts in tension.

While I situate Saydnaya within its production and reception context these are not my

main focus as I primarily pay attention to the film, its form and materiality. Hence, I integrate

newspaper coverage and resonance from political/state agents into my case study as those are

relevant elements for the discourse surrounding the film but I will not perform an extensive

discourse analysis or reception study.

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3. Theoretical framework

3.1. Social memory

As indicated above, On Collective Memory published by Maurice Halbwachs in 1924 was

pivotal for the development of the academic field of social memory studies. Heterogenous

concepts and terminologies emerged in different disciplines, ranging from (social) psychology

and medical neuroscience, to history, philosophy, cultural studies, media and film studies, aim

to theorize and understand the social dimensions of memory processes.47 As an increasingly

transdisciplinary and transnational phenomenon memory studies lacks a clear methodology.

Furthermore resultantly, run the risk of becoming an inflationary and over generalised term that

evades any definition.48 Culture and literature critic Aleida Assmann suggests several factors

why memory studies have been thriving so quickly and expansively. Next to shifting political

frameworks after the Cold War and with it the collapse of the “master narratives” that had

provided relatively stable orientation for the interpretation of the world, also the re-

appropriation of narratives of people that formerly suffered colonisation and the increasing

reappraisal of the Shoah had a huge impact. Additionally, the shifting status of information due

to new digital technology that creates novel ways of storage and circulation of data and images

fuelled the memory discourse anew. 49

In the following sections will I introduce influential conceptualisations of social

memory in Western humanities. We will find ourselves encountering several terms that appear

similar at first glance – cultural, collective and communicative memory – but differ in their

implications on a deeper theoretical level. I will use the term social memory as a categorical

term that indicates what all the aforementioned terms point towards: the relations, practices and

forms of memory that are shared and negotiated by groups. This includes technology,

understood here as being socially shaped as well as shaping society.

I do not claim comprehensiveness – as noted above the field of memory studies is vast and

stretches over several disciplines. As this thesis is situated within cinema studies and

47 Aleida Assmann, Memory, Individual and Collective (Oxford University Press, 2006), 211. See also Aleida

Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization : Functions, Media, Archives (Cambridge ; Cambridge

University Press, 2011); Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations,

no. 26 (1989): 7–24;. Andreas Huyssen, Present Pasts : Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory

(Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2003). 48 Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture, trans. Sara B. Young (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 1-2, 4. 49 Assmann, Memory, Individual and Collective, 211-212.

Scheuermann 14

furthermore deals with space, these two aspects functioned as guiding threads during my

literature research.

With his anthology On Collective Memory (1924) Maurice Halbwachs made a ground-

breaking contribution to the understanding of processes of memorialization and especially the

dialectic relations between individual and collectively shared memory.50 He conceptualized the

ways in which collective or social memory is actively constructed, mediated, and shaped in the

context of broader sociohistorical factors.51 In this sense, recollections are understood not

simply as imprints but as active selections and reconstructions of the past and individual

experiences. Even those most intimate, are the outcome of an ongoing dynamic social process.52

Halbwachs’ approach emphasizes the role of spoken and written language as a medium to share

memories on an interpersonal or intergenerational level. Suggesting a relatively stable

formation of social and group memories and failing to consider other media than language,

Halbwachs’ theorizations do not adequately grasp contemporary, collectively shared memory

in a digital age.53 Furthermore, Halbwachs has been criticised for his simplifying application of

individual processes of memory construction onto social groups. Nevertheless, Halbwachs’

contributions are essential for understanding the sociohistorical embeddedness of memory and

remain reference points for current research conducted in sociology and the humanities.

Another key work within the field of memory studies is Pierre Nora’s extensive seven-

volume project, in which he pursued the theorization of lieux de mémoire, translated realms of

memory (1984-1992). Nora differentiates between realms of memory and milieus of memory

(milieux de mémoire); the latter corresponds to Halbwachs collective memory. While milieus

of memory are lived and productively creating collective identities nurtured by the past, realms

of memory are symbolic places pointing towards the nowadays “dead” memory. Aiming to

describe changes of social memory from the 19th century on, Nora argues that there is no

collective memory anymore in the 20th century and therefore turns towards the realms of

memory that bear the possibility to activate certain memory images (of the French nation).

Those realms of memory can be geographic places, buildings, monuments but also art objects,

texts and stories, memorial days or certain symbolic practices.54 Although his interdisciplinary

50 Erika Apfelbaum, ‘Halbwachs and the Social Properties of Memory’, in Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates,

ed. Susannah Radstone and Bill Schwarz (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 83. 51 Apfelbaum, 82; Halbwachs, 38-40. 52 Apfelbaum, 85. 53 See also Huyssen, 17. 54 Astrid Erll, Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen: Eine Einführung (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler’sche

Verlagsbuchhandlung & Carl Ernst Poeschel GmbH, 2017) 20, accessed May 17, 2019,

http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/sub/detail.action?docID=4825466.

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approach is impressive, his focus on the nation-state as main institution for memory

construction needs to be criticized, especially in an increasingly globalised world with enhanced

possibilities of media circulation across national borders.55 Linked to that criticism is his neglect

of media specificity of memory.56

Aleida and Jan Assmann differentiate between communicative memory and cultural

memory. Communicative memory comprises interactions of everyday life that refer to historical

experiences and events that belong to the relative near past (up to 80-100 years ago). The

content of such communicative memory is variable, no fixed interpretations exist, and every

individual is equally competent.57 In contrast, cultural memory describes the object bound,

symbolic, traditionally repeated and actualised memory that contains certain, fixed narratives

and images and that reach back far into the past (thousands of years). This division appears

problematic because it separates two processes from each other that in my opinion are

intertwined: the discourses of everyday life and institutional discourses might differ in quality;

however, they are not isolated but interconnected with each other. The focus on the organisation

and shaping (Geformtheit) of content and certain memory topoi in the objectified cultural

memory denies the communicative memory the ability to participate in such shaping and

organising; or even to challenge narratives and icons of cultural memory. Thus, the sharp

differentiation between communicative and cultural memory does not appear adequate for

understanding society that is constructed and lived in close connection with and through its

media (technologies). Although A. & J. Assmann consider media technologies to some extent,

I refrain from their idea of storage media as “unlived memory” of “neutral elements” with no

vital connection to the present.58 This would suggest a neutrality of technology and a reviving

of the “unlived”/stored memory as performed entirely by social forces. In contrast, I argue that

technology needs to be considered in its own right, its technical mechanism, its inherent power

relations and discursive structures. Technology is never a neutral or empty vessel; it is both

shaping and shaped by society. However, technological determinism should be avoided, it is

important to recognise memory is shaped to a significant degree by technologies, but will never

55 See also Erll Kollektives Gedächtnis, 22; Huyssen 4; Dagmar Brunow, Remediating Transcultural Memory :

Documentary Filmmaking as Archival Intervention (Berlin ; De Gruyter, 2015), 3. 56 Brunow, 4. 57 Jan Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und Politische Identität in Frühen Hochkulturen.

(München: Beck, 1992); Erll, Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen; cf. Aleida Assmann,

Erinnerungsräume. Formen und Wandlungen des Kulturellen Gedächtnisses (München: Beck, 1999). 58 Assmann, Das Kulturelle Gedächtnis., 134-137; Erll, Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen, 28.

Scheuermann 16

be reducible to them.59 Grasping technological and societal shifts and phenomena as interlaced,

inevitably connected and mutually shaping, is the epistemological basis of this thesis.

Since architecture and space play crucial roles in this study, the essays in Andreas

Huyssen’s book Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory (2003) are

relevant even if they do not engage with cinema directly. Huyssen focuses on present memory

practices, objects and urban phenomena and is mostly interested in the ways in which memory

and temporality have invaded spaces and media that seemed among the most fixed, for him:

architecture, cities, monuments, sculpture.60 Huyssen “reads” the urban palimpsest of Berlin

after the reunification and the architectural challenges posed, for example, by the wide empty

spaces, or the “voids of Berlin” as Huyssen refers to them, that emerged after demolition of the

Berlin wall. Most relevant here is Huyssen’s theoretical discussion in relation to urban and

architectural phenomena.

“Memory is always transitory, notoriously unreliable, and haunted by forgetting […],”61

and thus it cannot be stored forever, not by technologies nor monuments. Social memory is

always subject to change on a political, generational and even individual level, as all these levels

are interconnected.62 In order to articulate our political, social and cultural positions and

dissatisfactions we need both past and future. This demand also points towards the constructive

moment of social memory in the present, which as such then belongs ever more to the present

than to the past, which it often is expected to represent.63

Huyssen argues that today we increasingly think of the past in the form of a memory

without borders rather than as a national history within borders. “Empathic interests” in memory

would change how we construct the past: While once the historical past aimed to ensure

coherence and legitimacy for social groups, from the family to the nation-state, those stable

links have been weakened. National traditions and historical pasts are increasingly deprived of

their geographic and political groundings in the processes of (cultural) globalization and re-

negotiated in the tension between global forces and local practices.64 Regarding the increasingly

fragmented memory politics of specific groups, Huyssen raises the question if a social or even

consensual memory is possible, and if not, in what form can social and cultural cohesion be

guaranteed without such memory?65 Not least due to this aspirational social cohesion, the role

59 Huyssen, 28. 60 Ibid., 6-7. 61 Ibid., 28. 62 Ibid., 28. 63 Ibid., 3,6. 64 Ibid., 4. 65 Ibid., 17.

Scheuermann 17

of nation-states is not entirely undermined by the globalization of memory. They still need to

find ways to commemorate events in the past and legitimize current status and future.66

However, as memory practices bear political potential and often call for the remembering of

atrocities committed in the past, they have been a crucial element of the human rights

movements around the world. 67 As we can see, different agents with disparate interests and

political positions (re)negotiate social memory in manifold ways in an ever more globalising

and digitalising world.

3.1.1. Cinema and social memory

Social as well as individual memory is always mediated – whether it be by linguistic speech,

images, sound, architecture, or performances. As Martin Zierold points out, it appears useful to

consider which media from the wide spectrum of available technologies are used for which

socially relevant – memorable – occasions, which forms of elaboration of memory they allow,

which forms are realized, how they are received etc.68 In this regard, he refers also to what he

calls policies of remembrance. Such policies can operate on a technological level such as the

commercialization of rights of computer languages, the establishment of file standards and the

regulations for transfer into new file formats. On the level of production, one needs to analyse

who is in position to influence politics of memory, which historic subjects are to be represented

and which strategies are used to tell their stories.69 Both are important and interconnected. What

does the emergence and proliferation of animated documentary mean for memory politics?

What forms and narratives does animated documentary allow or foster? How do certain media

technologies shape such forms? As we can see, the media technological side of films needs to

be considered and closely examined in its own right.

In her discussion in Memory: Histories, Theories, Debates (2010), Radstone introduces

the term cinema/memory. Cinema/memory describes a “liminal conception […] where

boundaries between memory and cinema dissolve in favour of a view of their mutuality and

inseparability.”70 As such cinema/memory also seeks to diffuse concepts of boundaries between

inside and outside, personal/individual and social/cultural and true and false in film theory.71

66 Huyssen, 16. 67 Ibid., 28. See also Karen E. Till, ‘Artistic and Activist Memory-Work: Approaching Place-Based Practice’,

Memory Studies 1, no. 1 (January 2008): 99–113, accessed March 18, 2019,

https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698007083893. 68 Martin Zierold, ‘Memory and Media Cultures’, in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, ed. Astrid Erll and

Ansgar Nünning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 404. 69 Zierold, 405. 70 Radstone, ‘Cinema and Memory’, 336. 71 Ibid.

Scheuermann 18

Her main argument is that cinema/memory never wholly belongs to either the public world of

cinema nor to the interior (private) realm of fantasy. Binding together images assimilated from

cinema with the images and scenes that currently circulated in the psyche of the spectator, the

concept of cinema/memory serves to highlight that memory is never irreducibly subjective.72

Thus, Radstone stresses the interpersonal and public dimensions of memory in relation to

cinema. She claims that it is important to consider how images are articulated in relation to pre-

existing images and narratives; although such resonances might remain open to some degree.

The relations between institutions as well as the wider historical-political moment are relevant.

73 Radstone suggests that complex emotions and social practices are supported by memory’s

interpersonal dimensions and furthermore, by memory’s national, political and cultural

dimensions. Therefore, further research should focus on how memory is articulated across

media, how it travels within and between different media, institutions, sites and nations.74

Astrid Erll argues in a similar way, who offers a comprehensive reading of cultural and

media memory studies and a broad overview of research approaches in Film und Kulturelle

Erinnerung (Film and Cultural Memory) (2008).75 She claims that it is insufficient to study a

single “media offer” (Medienangebot) in order to investigate its function within social memory.

Instead, the analysis of media offers needs to be considered against the background of the

condition of its distribution, production, reception as well as its discursive context.76 Although

Erll acknowledges the importance of technological and aesthetical dimensions in the analysis

of certain media offers they are only regarded as relevant for the potential of the film to become

memory media. She argues, in the same manner as A. & J. Assman, that the actualisation of

such potential lies entirely in the social realm and thus again neglects technological impacts.77

Consequently, she states that movies that are not watched won’t actualise any effects within

memory cultures.78 This in turn, would mean that only a very limited amount of films have an

impact on social memory; they can’t become memory movies (Erinnerungsfilme). Not only does

Erll focus on fiction film but she entirely omitts the potentialities of (the large number of)

ubiquitous images that are circulating constantly and that we encounter on a daily basis, for

example online through mobile devices.

72 Radstone, ‘Cinema and Memory’, 338. 73 Ibid., 340. 74 Ibid., 341. 75 Astrid Erll, Film und Kulturelle Erinnerung. Plurimediale Konstellationen (Berlin [u.a.]: de Gruyter, 2008),

accessed May 15, 2019, http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110209310. 76 Erll, Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen, 142-143; Zierold, 404. 77 Erll, Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen, 157. 78 Ibid., 158.

Scheuermann 19

Even though Dagmar Brunow draws on Erll and A. & J. Assman, she takes a different

stance towards non-fiction film and ubiquitous images. In her study Remediating Transcultural

Memory (2015), Brunow examines the role of documentary and essay films as a form of

archival intervention. Since social memory is always mediated, Brunow argues, audio-visual

media need to be considered in their diverse forms, including documentaries, user-generated

YouTube clips and essay films.79 Additionally, she emphasizes that these media forms are of

equal importance as fiction films in the workings of social memory and its remediation. The

indexical relationship to reality of documentary and user-generated media differs somewhat

from that of fiction films (see chapter 6.3 Indexicality and movement). They do however, bear

relevant qualities for social memory. One could argue documentary images may even be of

higher relevance, but both are relevant qualities for memory constructions, nevertheless.

Brunow’s study also points towards a new wave of research of transnational or transcultural

memory and media that can be tied to the transnational turn in Western academia.80

We can, then, summarise, that social memory is interpersonal and consists of memories

that groups and institutions select, negotiate and interpret to form identity and to make sense of

the past, the present and the future. Social memory constitutes a framework of interpretation

and identity for groups, ranging from families to societies and cultures. Social memory is not

static but malleable and always mediated. For this reason, the relation between medium

(technology) and memory, how memory travels through and across different media, must be

scrutinized.

3.1.2. Trauma

Much of memory studies cope with national catastrophes and collectively experienced – and

later on remembered – traumas. Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison deals with physical

and mental trauma on the individual level of the former detainees and with the collective trauma

of the Syrian people due to the war in their country. Therefore, a brief discussion of trauma is

required here.

Huyssen identifies that liminality as a potential reason for the prevalence of trauma;

“trauma as a psychic phenomenon is located on the threshold between remembering and

forgetting, seeing and not seeing, transparency and occlusion, experience and its absence in the

79 Brunow, 4-5. 80 Inez Hedges, World Cinema and Cultural Memory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Astrid Erll,

‘Travelling Memory’, Parallax 17, no. 4 (November 2011): 4–18, accessed March 5, 2019,

https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2011.605570.

Scheuermann 20

repetition.”81 Through trauma it seems one can gain access to something otherwise completely

out of sight. As with memory, trauma is marked by instability, transitoriness and repetitive

structure. Whilst both memory and trauma maintain a relation to what is necessarily absent, that

which is negotiated in the memory or the traumatic symptom shouldn’t be conflated with

trauma: “It would deny human agency and lock us into compulsive repetition. Memory, whether

individual or generational, political or public, is always more than only the prison house of the

past.”82 Therefore, he argues that the increasingly frequent practice of reading the whole history

of the 20th century under the sign of trauma – with the Shoah as the ultimate cipher of traumatic

unrepresentability and unspeakability –, the approach to history as trauma is not useful for the

understanding of political layers of contemporary memory discourse. On the other hand,

explorations of the past cannot do without the notion of historical trauma. For Huyssen the

notion of historical trauma is legitimate, however, where nations or groups of people engage in

dealing with a history of violence, either suffered or perpetrated.83 This ties back to his position

that is the very function of public memory is to allow individuals to break out of individual

traumatic repetitions through social actions of memory.84

In 1996 Cathy Caruth, professor of comparative literature, published Unclaimed

Experience – Trauma, Narrative, and History (1996) and since then her work has been pivotal

for anyone working with trauma within humanities. According to Caruth, trauma designates

“the confrontation with an event that, in its unexpectedness or horror, cannot be placed within

the schemes of prior knowledge […] and thus continually returns, in its exactness, at a later

time.”85 As an encounter that is too unexpected to be fully known by the person experiencing

the flashback of the traumatic event, she is unable to consciously access or understand their

trauma.86 The impossibility of willed, thus controlled, access to the traumatic memory is crucial

and implies its haunting characteristic.87 Although Caruth acknowledges that trauma requires

integration for the sake of testimony (in order to communicate the traumatic experience) and

for the sake of cure, she claims that with its integration into narrative memory or speech the

traumatic experience would lose its precision and force.88 Caruth perceives trauma as something

that is closer to the truth of an event and therefore shouldn’t be narrativized. She writes: “The

81 Huyssen, 8. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., 9. 84 Ibid. 85 Cathy Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 153. 86 Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1996), 4; Caruth, Trauma, 154. 87 Caruth, Trauma, 151, 154.; Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 4. 88 Caruth, Trauma, 153.

Scheuermann 21

danger of speech, of integration into the narration of memory, may lie not in what it cannot

understand, but in that it understands too much.”89

Kansteiner and Weilnböck criticize precisely this refusal of narrative in their essay

Against Cultural Trauma (2010).The authors claim the failure of sociologists and humanities

scholars to develop a truly interdisciplinary trauma concept that integrates psychological

findings sufficiently.90 Quite the contrary, the aestheticization and fetishization of trauma as

inaccessible and unrepresentable, as well as the rejection of narrativization renders this

paradigm even incompatible with results of clinical research in psychology as narrativization

of traumatic experiences are precisely the aim of therapy. Referring to Fischer, Kansteiner and

Weilnböck, go even further, claiming that anybody who encourages people to engage with

traumatic pasts while at the same time preventing narrative processes to develop potentially

retraumatizes them.91

Another important perspective regarding the (un)representability of cultural trauma has

been brought forward by Deirdre Boyle in her essay in the edited volume Documentary

Testimonies (2010).92 Here she presents two case studies that are both documentaries about

genocides that took place outside Europe and the US and reflects on the cultural aspects of the

depiction of trauma.93 Referring to the Bilderverbot – the prohibition of images – in post-Nazi

Germany about the Shoah, Boyle writes:

So much of trauma theory in cinema has been predicated on the Shoah. But not every culture is the same: not all cultures reject the visible representations of trauma, valuing the spoken or written word above all other means of witnessing.94

89 Caruth, Trauma, 154. 90 Wulf Kansteiner and Harald Weilnböck, ‘Against the Concept of Cultural Trauma (or How I Learned to Love

the Suffering of Others Withoutthe Help of Psychotherapy)’, in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, ed.

Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010), 229. 91 Gottfried Fischer, Von den Dichtern lernen: Kunstpsychologie und dialektische Psychoanalyse (Würzburg:

Königshausen & Neumann, 2005), 205 cited after Kansteiner and Weilnböck, ‘Against the Concept of Cultural

Trauma (or How I Learned to Love the Suffering of Others Withoutthe Help of Psychotherapy)’, 233. 92 Bhaskar Sarkar and Janet Walker, eds., Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering (New York and

London: Routledge, 2010). 93 S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (S-21: la machine de mort Khmère rouge, Rithy Panh,

France/Cambodia, 2003) is a documentary about the Pol Pot regime in the mid-1970s in Cambodia in which two

million people (nearly half of population) were systematically destroyed by starvation, overwork, torture,

execution. The Poet: Unconcealed Poetry (Pusi tak terkuburka, Garin Nugroho, Indonesia, 2001) tells a story

about the fall of the Sukarno regime and the rise of a new military regime under Suharto execute over two million

Indonesians who were suspected to be communists in the mid-1960s. (Deirdre Boyle, ‘Trauma, Memory,

Documentary: Re-Enactment in Two Films by Rithy Panh (Cambodia) and Garin Nugroho (Indonesia)’, in

Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering, ed. Bhaskar Sarkar and Janet Walker (New York and

London: Routledge, 2010), 155.) 94 Boyle, 162.

Scheuermann 22

Discussing the wider cultural attitudes and practices towards death that can be found in the

several different cultures that people who have worked on Saydnaya and their possible

implications for the final film (which would anyway turn out vague and hypothetical) is not

what I intend to achieve here. I do, however, want to stress my own researcher positionality. As

a German master’s student in Sweden, even if implicitly, inevitable informs my interpretations

of the knowledge I am able to access.

3.2. Animated documentary

Although there have been cohesive animated documentaries quite early in cinema’s history the

proliferation of animation technology like CGI since the mid-1990s has helped the expansion

of the genre.95 Although feature films such as Waltz with Bashir (2008) and Life, Animated

(2017) have gained increased attention for the animated documentary genre within the

cinematic landscape – scholarly and publicly – in recent times animated documentary is still a

marginal cinematic form, often marked as an outstanding exception.96 Scholars of both

animation and documentary have been engaged in the discourse on animated documentary,

exploring its possibilities and limitations.97 It needs to be noted that the academic discourse

takes place in the pre-existing arenas – academic journals, edited volumes, film festivals,

conferences – of either documentary or animation; there are, for example, no independent

conferences or journals on animated documentary yet.

The discourse on animated documentary is mainly concerned with representational

matters and the indexical relations of the animated images to reality, often discussing the

possibilities and limitations of animation to convey truthful stories about the world and its

potentials to be inclusive of underrepresented and marginalized groups.98

95 Roe, Animated Documentary,17. 96 Ibid. 97Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1991); Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, 2nd ed (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010);

Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (London ; New York: Routledge, 1998); David Bordwell, ‘Showing What

Can’t Be Filmed’, Observations on Film Art , accessed February 11, 2019,

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2009/03/04/showing-what-cant-be-filmed/. 98 Sybil DelGaudio, ‘If Truth Be Told, Can Toons Tell It? Documentary and Animation’, Film History 9, (1997):

189-199; Ji-Hoon Kim, ‘Animating the Photographic Trace, Intersecting Phantoms with Phantasms:

Contemporary Media Arts, Digital Moving Pictures, and the Documentary’s “Expanded Field”’, Animation 6,

no. 3 (November 2011): 371–86; Lawrence Thomas Martinelli, ‘The Drawing of Reality: Truth and Artifice of

Comics and Animated Cinema’, Cinéma & Cie, no. 1 (2010): 33–40; Abraham Ravett, ‘Everything’s For You :

Reflections on Animating a “Fierce and Inexorable Bond”’, Animation 6, no. 3 (November 2011): 325–34; Paul

Ward, ‘Animating with Facts: The Performative Process of Documentary Animation in the Ten Mark (2010)’,

Animation 6, no. 3 (November 2011): 293–305; Piotrowska.

Scheuermann 23

Annabelle Honess Roe’s anthology Animated Documentary (2013) is so far the only

extensive discussion of animated documentary as a film genre in book-length. Roe succeeds in

laying the foundations for a more independent discourse on animated documentary and its

specificity as genre and film form. She establishes an ontology of animated documentary,

assesses representational and technological strategies and relevant concepts such as realism,

authenticity, embodiment and subjectivity. The crucial aspect for Annabelle Honess Roe is to

distinguish animated documentary from hybrid forms of films combining animation, archival

and/or live-action footage is her emphasis on the “cohesive whole”.99 In the case that the

prevailing film contains live action and animation material, the animation material has to be

integrated to the extent that removing it would be either impossible or would make the film

incoherent.100 Accordingly, Saydnaya can be defined as animated documentary as the animated

3D model is vital for the interactive documentary.

Animation has the ability to create images of incidents that are non-representable by

photographic media for one reason or another; in the case of Saydnaya the reason is twofold:

first, there exists no visual footage of the detention centre, and secondly, the memories and

emotional states of the survivors are phenomena that can’t be perceived through our senses

without prior externalizations. Animation presents itself as a useful tool for documentary to

make subjective experiences of historical events available to a public, and, as Victoria Walden

states; “embodied, fluid experience of memory is certainly something that a photograph or live-

action film cannot satisfactorily depict.”101 Thus, animation expands the range and depth of

what documentary can represent and how it represents it.

The expansion of representations by animated documentary is furthermore facilitated

by the way that animation partially releases documentary from its visual indexical relationship

with reality.102 While animated documentary images might uphold the indexical relationship on

the level of sound, the relationship to a physically manifested reality that can be captured by

the visual sense and/or a camera can be overridden. Indexical relationships – purposely used in

its plural form here – are closely linked to notions of authenticity. Thus, animation questions

concepts of realism, truth and witnessing in documentary filmmaking.103

99 Roe, Animated Documentary, 176. 100 Ibid. 101 Victoria Grace Walden, ‘Animation and Memory’, in The Animation Studies Reader, ed. Nichola Dobson et al.

(New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 83; Wells, Understanding Animation, 22. 102 Roe, Animated Documentary, 170. 103 Roe, 3.

Scheuermann 24

Jonathan Rozenkrantz concludes after his critical discussion not only of the indexicality

of animated documentary but also of the discourse around it, that the existential difference

between the photograph and the (digital) drawing is that the former requires and simultaneously

gives evidence of its referent while the latter doesn’t. That, in turn, means that animated images

document differently and that such difference must not be denied by scholars in order to have

a productive discussion about the veracity of animated documentary.104

The loosening of the visual indexical bond allows a heightened degree of self-reflexivity

that can be described as a media-specific trait of animated documentary. Even if not visible we

are aware of the human agency acting between frames or in the digital construction of CGI,

creating the movement and space. Thus, the materiality of the medium points out the

constructed mode of its own images. This heightened degree of self-reflexivity, furthermore,

allows the exploration of the reliability of subjective memories through interjections with

fantasy images, and again leads us to questions of truthful representations.105

Animated documentary’s complicated indexical relationship with reality requires novel

ways of establishing statements about the world. Accordingly, Tess Takahashi’s essay on the

working of “speculation” in animated documentary as well as Landsman and Bendors

discussion of the newly fostered relationship between viewer and documentary film, moving

away from faith in the in the authority of indexical images but towards trust in the documentary

to make a truth claim that reflects the world in a sophisticated way, both point out a shift in the

way truths and facts are constructed in contemporary societies.106 I find their conceptualisations

useful and will apply them in the upcoming analysis, especially in order to think about the

forensic qualities of images and sound in tension to their stylistic and narrative use.

The usage of animation to represent incidents that happened in the actual world is not a

new phenomenon but dates back to the beginning of cinema. The Sinking of the Lusitania from

1918 by the American animator Winsor McCay is frequently named as the first animated

documentary and shows the sinking of the British passenger ship by a German U-boat in 25.000

drawings on clear cells, an incident that hadn’t been photographed.107 Thus, The Sinking of the

104 Jonathan Rozenkrantz, ‘Colourful Claims: Towards a Theory of Animated Documentary’, Film International ,

accessed 11 February 2019, http://filmint.nu/?p=1809. 105 Walden ‘Animation and Memory’, 83; Ohad Landesman and Roy Bendor, ‘Animated Recollection and

Spectatorial Experience in “Waltz with Bashir”’, Animation 6, no. 3 (November 2011): 356. 106 Tess Takahashi, ‘Experiments in Documentary Animation: Anxious Borders, Speculative Media’, Animation

6, no. 3 (November 2011): 232; Landesman and Bendor, 354. 107 DelGaudio, 190.

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Lusitania demonstrates the early use of animation as substituting for missing live-action

footage.108

[…] the history of the overlaps between animation and documentary is not one of easy continuities. There is no single beginning, but rather many concurrent, international examples that demonstrate the instinct that documentary can be strengthened via animation, and vice versa.109

But this thesis does not aim to recapitulate a media history of animation’s use in non-fiction

film and the establishment of animated documentary by the end of the 20th century, as it has

been done already by Sybil DelGaudio and Roe.110 However, I would like to note that animation

has historically been used as a tool for clarification and illustration in factual and educational

films, and still is until today.111 Explaining scientific theories, Evolution (1925) and The Einstein

Theory of Relativity (1923) by Max Fleischer combined live-action with animation, and

constitute other examples of early usage of animation in documentary – even these fall in a

realm of natural sciences, that are strongly connected to the establishment of objective truth

claims. Although the genre of animated documentary, as a defined by Roe as a cohesive whole,

was only established in the mid-1990s, the beginnings of animation in a natural science context

appear interesting regarding the following analysis of Saydnaya and its specific usage of

animation technologies and techniques.112

108 Roe, Animated Documentary, 8. 109 Roe, 6. 110 DelGaudio; Roe, Animated Documentary. 111 Roe, Animated Documentary, 8-9. 112 Roe, ‘The Evolution of Animated Documentary’, 174; Roe, Animated Documentary, 13.

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4. (Re)Modelling Saydnaya

4.1. Forensic Architecture and Amnesty

International

The collaboration between Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International locates the

Saydnaya prison project clearly in the field of human rights activism. A bright yellow button

asks the viewer to “take action” after every film clip, leading one to an online petition addressed

to the governments of the United States and Russia, co-chairing the international Syria Support

Group (ISSG), a workgroup that aims to find a diplomatic solution to the crises in Syria. This

petition requests the US and Russian governments to use their influence in the ISSG to ensure

that independent detention monitors are allowed to investigate the conditions in the detention

centres run by the Syrian government and its security forces. Also, it calls on them to inform

the families of the detainees about the legal status etc. of their relatives. Furthermore, the

collaborative Saydnaya prison project has contributed to the Amnesty report Human

Slaughterhouse: Mass hangings and extermination at Saydnaya prison (2016), that was

published as well in 2016.113 In addition to the human rights violations at Saydnaya prison, the

report deals with the mass exterminations that are executed in a building located nearby.

Amnesty International’s investigation covered the period between September 2011 and

December 2015 and estimates that between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed without a

juridical trial. The building is also located on the Saydnaya map model and leads to Amnesty’s

report.

The unambiguous and open positioning of the interactive documentary within the field

of human rights activism has implications for the perspective the filmmakers take, as well as

for its reception and therefore need to be considered. Not only in this specific case, but generally

documentary film requires contextualisation in order to make its ideological stances

understood. John Grierson’s definition of documentary film as “the creative treatment of

actuality” from 1931 is still employed in academia, nevertheless criticised for his vagueness

and its risk to slip into total constructivism.114 The difficulty of determining what constitutes

“actuality” complicates the situation. In other words, we can only apprehend the concrete,

material reality upon which our existence depends through mental representations that in the

113 Amnesty International, ‘Human Slaughterhouse. Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria’

(2016), accessed January 28, 2019, https://www.amnestyusa.org/files/human_slaughterhouse.pdf. 114 John Grierson, Grierson on Documentary, ed. Forsyth Hardy (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), 147.

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best case resemble reality. Mental representations are largely socially constructed, selectively

chosen and subjective. Some film theorists have responded to this problem with the claim that

documentary is nothing more than fiction covering over its own fictionality; a claim that denies

the possibility of a material reality and from which I clearly distance myself and my work.115

Nichols, in contrast, suggests that the historical world is not merely something we imagine,

even though it is always mediated by our imagination of it. Therefore, documentary is not the

representation of an imaginary reality but an imaginative representation of an actual historical

reality.116 The emphasis still lies on the discursive status of all documentative utterances about

the world and events in the past, as stressed by Michael Renov in Toward a Poetics of

Documentary.117

The aim here is not to discuss possible definitions of documentary and their problems

in depth. But what I want to stress is the inevitably biased positioning and the implied

ideological stances of documentary films. Instead of veiling those or claiming an unbiased

objectivity, Saydnaya communicates its aim – calling for awareness of and action against the

human rights violations – openly. It criticises the practices of the Syrian government and

security services as well as the non-intervention on sides of the ISSG, i.e. the US and Russian

governments. The interactive documentary addresses the audience with the solicitation to

support this protest and provides the possibilities to do so through the petition. Tying back to

the ideological embeddedness of documentary film, Saydnaya is neither more nor less biased

than other documentary films, but its implications are highly transparent, or if one wants

“honest”.

Another factor to consider is the academic embeddedness and institutional allegiance

of Forensic Architecture to the Goldsmiths University of London. The production process of

Saydnaya has been developed and implemented by architects, filmmakers, animators and

academics that established and shaped the artistic and scholarly practice in cooperation,

grouped under the umbrella of the research agency. In the following section, I will give an

overview of the theoretical concepts and artistic practices of Forensic Architecture since they

heavily shaped the film project discussed here production, film product and reception.

115 See for example William Howard Guynn, A Cinema of Nonfiction (Rutherford : London ; Cranbury, NJ:

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ; Associated University Presses, 1990), 17-19; and related Barbara C Foley,

Telling the Truth: the Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018),

29-41. 116 Nichols, Representing Reality, 12-18, 110. 117 Michael Renov, ‘Toward a Poetics of Documentary’, in Theorizing Documentary, ed. Michael Renov (New

York: Routledge, 1993), 27.

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In the introduction of the edited volume Forensis by Forensic Architecture, Eyal

Weizman lays out the etymological origins of forensics, stemming from forensis which is Latin

for “pertaining to the forum”.118 The Roman forum was a versatilely used space of politics, law

and economy. The term underwent a strong linguistic shift in its process of modernization and

gradually forensics came to refer exclusively to the use of medicine and science in the court of

law, that the term forum has become limited to. By this linguistic shift the forensics lost a

critical dimension of its practice, namely its potential as political practice.119

The self-claimed “forensic agency”, founded at the Centre for Research Architecture at

Goldsmiths in 2011, aims for a new forensis that revives this political potential. Weizman

accordingly states: “Forensis is a good model for connecting aesthetic practices, activism, and

science because it is structured by the necessity of taking sides in an argument, of fighting for

and defending claims.”120 Forensic Architecture’s research agenda is set up according to the

political interests and commitments of its members. The overarching aims are (a) the

interrogation of ways in which new types of evidence affect political and legal processes and

(b) the critical evaluation of the epistemologies, assumptions, protocols and politics of

knowledge production by contemporary forensic practices. Forensis, thus, becomes an

operative concept as well as a critical practice. 121

The research agency found in architecture a mode of intervention. Understanding a

building not as static thing but as an architectural form and matter that can document is key to

the practice of Forensic Architecture. Architecture performs its documentary functions by

registering the effect of its environment, it stores those forces in material deformations (cracks)

and transmits this information further with the help of other media technologies.122

Ascribing (architectural) matter a sensorial capacity is intertwined with a specific

understanding of aesthetics. Here, the sense of aesthetics is close to one of ancient Greek times:

to be aestheticized means to sense, and inversely, to be unaestheticized is to make oneself numb

to perception. While aesthetics are generally understood as what pertains human senses and

perception, material aesthetics here instead capture the ways in which matter prehends (rather

118 Eyal Weizmann, ‘Introduction: Forensis’, in Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth, ed. Forensic

Architecture et al. (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014), 9. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 13. 121 Ibid., 11-13. Weizmann also suggests the emergence of a “forensic turn”, understood as a sensibility attuned to

material investigations, that has not only become evident in contemporary law and the fields of human and

environmental science but also in popular entertainment. If we consider the latter as an indicator of cultural

shifts, then in the case of the forensic turn, it is significant that the scientist-detective supersedes the

psychologist/psychoanalyst-detective that was popular in TV drama throughout the 1980s and 1990s. (Weizman,

‘Introduction: Forensis’,. 31). 122 Weizman, ‘Introduction: Forensis’, 13-15.

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than apprehend or comprehend) its environments.123 Matter, then, “prehends by absorbing

environmental themes into its material organization. Aesthetics, conceived in this way, is the

mode and means by which material things relate to each other.”124 The repression of the

aesthetic or expressive domain of documentary film has a long history and arises from an

institutionalization of the binary art/science opposition that is prevailing in Western

philosophy.125 Hence, it does not appear surprising that although the intersection between arts

and human rights movements always has been existent, the artistic work functioned mainly as

an illustrative or representational means and were mainly kept external to the actual

investigations. Forensic architecture shifts away from this illustrative use of arts and employs

aesthetic techniques as investigation resources and means.126 Additionally, Weizman notes,

forensics itself is an aesthetic practice

because it depends on both the modes and the means by which incidents are sense, recorded, and presented. Investigative aesthetics seeks to slow down time and intensifies sensibility to space, matter, and image. It also seeks to devise new modes of narration in the articulation of truth claims.127

4.2. Memory prisons

We can see this investigative or operational employment of artistic techniques in the production

process of Saydnaya. In April 2016 a joint group of Amnesty International and Forensic

Architecture travelled to Istanbul to meet five survivors of Saydnaya prison. Forensic

Architecture developed the interview techniques in consultation with the Forensic Psychology

Unit of Goldsmiths University of London. Before the actual interviews and speaking directly

with the survivors, a preliminary 3D model of the Saydnaya prison was created based on written

interviews conducted by Amnesty International researchers in December 2015 and February

2016 as well as on satellite images of the building. The former detainees were informed about

how the interviews would be conducted, about the technology employed and that they could

stop the process at any given moment. The descriptions given by the witnesses covered the

cells, corridors, architectural elements like windows, doors and stairwells. Architect Hania

Jamal (Forensic Architecture) created a model of the prison based on these descriptions with a

3D modelling software. The witnesses were actively involved in the process as the witnesses

not only observed the modelling but also actively engaged in it, corrected errors and refined the

123 Weizman, ‘Introduction: Forensis’, 14; Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of

Detectability (New York, NY: Zone Books, 2018), 94-95. 124 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 95. 125 Renov, 33. 126 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 94. 127 Ibid.

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model, especially when it comes to the spaces within the prison. The new models where

compared to the previously produced model and eventually integrated. If contradictory accounts

occurred the team tried to carefully resolve them. Also errors were noted, as they reflect on the

subjective experience and the mental trauma the survivors experienced. For example, Anas

describes that he saw a circular corridor when he once was beaten outside of his cell. As usual

he had to cover his eyes but because of the beatings his hands slipped off his face and caught a

glimpse of his surroundings. Based on the other information about the architectural structure of

the building and the statements by the other witnesses, this description by Anas might not testify

to the actual architectural form, as there were most likely only straight corridors in Saydnaya.

It is, however, more of a reflection on the agonizing torture and the feeling of incarceration. As

viewers, we find a text box at the location of the video clip that contextualise Anas testimony

and reflects on its possible implications.128

The interviewers also asked the witnesses about specific objects like blankets, furniture

and torture tools. Those could be chosen from a digital library that was prepared in advance

based on previous interviews. In case a certain object was not in the library yet, the team

modelled it. Those objects were then located within the model of the prison according to their

memory of where and how the incidents that included these objects took place. A crucial aspect

of this form of interview is that the active participation of building the model sparked new

memories of the witnesses’ experiences. As they locate windows and doors, place and describe

certain objects and reconstruct the measurements of cells, they recalled fragments of their life

in detention that they previously did not remember.129 So does the detailed description and the

recollection of the size of a hatch in the door of the cell, evoked memories for Samer who has

been tortured by pushing his head sideways through the hatch and then being kicked by the

guards.130

The idea of memories being stored or placed in rooms and recollected through mental

walks across those memory sites is not a new one, as Frances Yates shows in her seminal,

eponymous work on the art of memory. The connection of architecture and memory can be

found already in the writings of Greek and Roman philosophers of the classic antique era such

as Simondis of Ceos, Aristotle and Plato, and later Quintilian and Cicero.131The Roman

128 Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison, ‘Ana’s solitary cell,’ accessed March 19, 2019,

https://saydnaya.amnesty.org/?kind=location&id=solitary-3. 129 Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison, ‘Methodology,’ accessed March 17, 2019,

https://saydnaya.amnesty.org/en/methodology.html. 130 Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison, ‘Through the window,’ accessed March 13, 2019,

https://saydnaya.amnesty.org/?kind=video&id=01. 131 Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (London: Pimlico, 1992).

Scheuermann 31

philosopher Cicero developed the mnemonic device of the memory palace or the method of loci

in his work De oratore. Written in the age of great Latin oratory Cicero described how the

orators, whose “mnemonic feats” were greatly admired back then, managed to recall the

tremendous amount of information.132 We can imagine the memory of a trained orator of that

ancient period as architecturally constructed – as memory palaces – with orders of memorised

places that are stocked with varying sets of images and objects, depending on the speech they

were giving.133

Bruno also refers to Cicero, leading first to the topographical mapping of discourses and

the art of mapping through mobilizing one of her central example cases in Atlas of Emotion, the

Carte du pays tendre published by Madeleine de Scudéry in her novel Clélie in 1654. Bruno

states that the art of memory has always been a matter of mapping space and also was an

architectural affair traditionally. 134 In reference to Cicero and Quintilian, Bruno writes:

To remember the different parts of a discourse, one would imagine a building and implant the discourse in site as well as in sequence: that is, one would walk around the building and populate each part of the space with an image; then one would mentally retraverse the building, moving around and through the space, revisiting in turn all the rooms that had been ’decorated’ with imaging. Conceived in this way, memories are motion pictures.135

In other words, when we return to a place it is not mere recollection or recognition of the room,

but we recollect the memories inscribed in it, in the same manner as memories are inscribed in

Plato’s wax block. Plato described memory like a block of wax that our perceptions and

thoughts make imprints on; like one makes impressions from seal rings. Such imprints can be

overwritten, and the memory matter can take new shapes. This points towards the quality of

places as sites of mnemonic palimpsest. The different layers of memory writing can be effaced

but written over and over again; just as the physical imprints on the wax block can be reshaped

again and again. Moreover, Bruno points out the link between memories and motion pictures.

By means of the architectural promenades through rooms and sites images were collected. One

could understand the process of recollection as a way of re-enactment of experiences that

actives imagination, emotion and somatic responses:136

In this way, memory interacts with the haptic experience of place; it is precisely this experience of revisiting sites that the architectural journey of film sets in place, and in motion. Places live in memory and revive in the moving image.137

132 Yates, 43. 133 Yates, 43; Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 46. 134 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 220. 135 Ibid., 220-21. 136 Ibid., 221-22. 137 Ibid., 221.

Scheuermann 32

Deirdre Boyle seeks to demonstrate in her contribution to the edited volume Documentary

Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering (2010) by Sarkar Bhaskar and Janet Walker, that

traumatic memory demands re-enactment for its recall. Traumatic memory is here contrasted

to narrative memory that can be organized and communicated on a linguistic level. As noted

above, sometimes the victims of traumatic events are literally and metaphorically “speechless”

when it comes to the traumatic experience. Then an organization on a somatosensory or iconic

level (e.g. flashbacks) is required instead. 138 Returning to the site of a specific incident or

experience can elicit such a bodily sensorial recalling otherwise inaccessible to the witness.

Bhaskar and Walker refer to this practice not necessarily as re-enactments (although they can

become such) but as testimony in situ or situated testimony.139 Such situated testimony (or re-

enactments) on site require the accessibility of the place in focus. In the case of the Saydnaya

prison this was impossible. The ability of animation to depict incidents, more precisely here

sites and recalled perceptions, allows otherwise blacked out experiences to become available.

As we have seen, architectural modelling functions here, in Saydnaya, firstly as the form

of representation of the space, in the sense that is a product of externalization of memory. In

case there will ever be a trial, the model also seeks to function as an evidentiary document.

Secondly, architectural modelling becomes the means to elicit further recollections by the

witnesses.140 The virtual memory images of the witnesses are evoked by the construction of

virtual images of the 3D modelling software. A definition of the term virtual is required here

before proceeding the discussion. In reference to its etymological roots, Friedberg defines

virtual as a substitute, an immaterial proxy for the material. “Virtual”, she writes, “refers to the

register of representation itself – but representation that can be either simulacral or directly

mimetic.”141 Thus, the virtual can have a referent in the real (mimesis) or not (simulacrum). In

that sense, the term ‘virtual’ serves to distinguish between a representation “that appears

‘functionally or effectively but not formally’ of the same materiality as what it represents.

Virtual images have a materiality and a reality but of a different kind, a second-order

materiality, liminally immaterial.”142 Through digital animation technologies the translation of

one form of virtual materiality into another form of virtual materiality of the sensory memories

(auditive and visual) is performed. Both are virtual materialities, with the difference that the

latter is accessible also for those other than the witness experiencing them.

138 Boyle, 160. 139 Sarkar and Walker, 11. 140 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 86. 141 Friedberg, 8. 142 Ibid., 11.

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5. Experiencing Saydnaya

5.1. Entering Saydnaya

When one enters the Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian torture prison website the first choice on the

part of the spectator has to be made. She can choose between seeing an intro clip about the

project or entering the explore mode. The explore mode leads to a slowly rotating, elevated 3D

architectural model of the detention centre. The model is roofless which allows the viewer to

see the elevated ground plan of the inner architectural structure. Small headers hover above

different locations of the model, indicating the sites to which they refer, for example Samer’s

and Jamal’s group cell or Ana’s solitary cell. Mobile sites, such as the arrival truck, can be

chosen too, giving insights into how the deported detainees first arrived in Saydnaya.

The spectator can decide between two different modes to “explore” Saydnaya: either by

location or by witness. The opening sequence suggests the exploration by location. A sidebar

on the left gives an overview of the film clips that either can be found at a specific location or,

if the witness mode is chosen, in which film clips show a specific witness telling his story. The

clips overlap partly since the former detainees experienced and testify to the same procedures

and places, e.g. Samer and Jamal were kept in the same group cell and all detainees had to

experience the torturous so-called “welcome party” when arriving in Saydnaya.

Once a film clip ends one can either click a cross button in the upper right corner in

order to return to the site this testified memory has been located in. Or one can, by clicking

guiding arrows on the left and right edges of the screen, move on towards another film clip.

Their sequencing, however, remained a question unsolved to me. The following or previous

clip could be connected to a different location and/or witness. Thus, in order to get the full

testimony of one specific witness, the spectator needs to return to the 3D model first and choose

the next clip on the side panel. The same principle applies to the exploration through location.

5.2. Montage and navigation

As we can see, there are various ways to navigate through the virtual reconstruction of

Saydnaya, across the space, the different sites and the testimonies. As mentioned before,

Giuliana Bruno rejects Michel De Certeau’s distinction between tours and maps. But let us

mobilize these different stances towards the practices of walking and seeing in detail here in

order to understand the functioning of the interactive documentary Saydnaya. As what we are

Scheuermann 34

dealing with here is not only moving images that are arranged into a montage, but is an

interactive form in which the spectator is not only seeing those images moving in front of her,

allowing her to be moved but also move herself through the sites the film offers her access to.

Further, she navigates through the animated space herself by click and drag, choosing her own

path, albeit limited and pre-conditioned path. Furthermore, one needs to return to the elevated

ground plan first if one wants to enter another room; within those rooms then the

spectator/navigator can steer the field of vision. Thus, I argue that the limitations become

obvious, as the obtrusion of limited possibilities is more palpable than in, for example, second

reality games like World of Warcraft, that offer a tremendous number of possibilities for

navigation. Nevertheless, I want to stress the limitations and preconditions of virtual space

because it leads to the role that technology plays in the construction of space. Even virtual

reality or gaming worlds such as World of Warcraft, which, whilst impressive in scale and user

choices, are still inevitably determined by technology, amongst other factors.

Friedberg decouples the term “virtual” from its often unquestioned and destructive

equation with virtual reality, challenging the widespread assumption that “virtual” only refers

to electronically mediated or digitally produced images and experiences.143 Recapitulating

Friedberg’s definition of the virtual that I have discussed above seems useful here: The virtual

is a substitute, a liminally immaterial proxy for the material. Friedberg argues the term virtual

needs to be freed from its media-specific bonds. There was virtuality before the digital age;

painterly, cinematic, televisual, photographic. Mirrors, paintings, images produced by the

camera obscura as well as photographs and film produce mediated representations of virtual

quality.144 Furthermore, the entanglement of virtual with the idea of an immersive and unframed

virtual reality needs to be resolved. Framed images (on a computer screen, TV screen, theatre

screen) organize and structure perception and cognition in a very different way compared to

visual systems that supply an infinite number of dynamic perspectives in a 360-degree space.145

How can we then understand the moving images we encounter on the different paths

through the virtual space of Saydnaya analytically? The term path has been used by Sergei

Eisenstein in his definition of montage in “Architecture and Montage”:

[When talking about cinema], the word path is not used by chance. Nowadays it is the

imaginary path followed by the eye and the varying perceptions of an object that depend

on how it appears to the eye. Nowadays it may also be the path followed by the mind across

143 Friedberg, 7. 144 Ibid., 10-11. 145 Ibid., 11.

Scheuermann 35

a multiplicity of phenomena, far apart in time and space, gathered in a certain sequence

into a single meaningful concept; and these diverse impressions pass in front of an

immobile spectator.146

Eisenstein describes montage as the gathering of a multiplicity of phenomena in a certain

sequence that creates meaning. Eisenstein points out the power that derives from the sequential

juxtaposition of film shots, as the full meaning of a “montage statement only emerges in the

sequential juxtaposition [of its constituent ‘frames’].”147 A single image in isolation is

indecipherable and only unfolds its meaning in relation to other images, contexts and the

knowledge already available.148 Bruno mobilizes Eisenstein’s concept of montage and states

accordingly: “The promenade is the main link between the architectural ensemble and film.”149

They “share the framing of space and succession of sites that [are] organized as shots from

different viewpoints” and eventually, editing and montage are joint elements because “like film,

architecture – apparently static – is shaped by the montage of spectatorial movements.”150 Even

though the film spectator is seemingly static, the spectator moves across an imaginary path and

traverses multiple times and sites. In this meaning, such a spectator is not a fixed, disembodied

one, but a moving spectator that is travelling through the space. Thus, both architecture and

film involve movement.151

Also Anne Friedberg analyses the (im)mobility of the architectural and the filmic

spectator in her discussion of Le Corbusier’s panorama windows. Architect Le Corbusier

challenged the perpendicular, “perspectival window” with his eleven-meter-long horizontal

panorama windows by flattening the perspectival depth of view. By cutting away sky and

foreground he challenged traditional fixity and proportion.152 Architectural theorist and media

scholar Beatriz Colomina states that Le Corbusier’s windows correspond to spaces of movie

camera and photography. In this way the architectural structure of the house, Colomina argues,

becomes a system of views that are choreographed by the visitor walking through it, in the same

way the filmmaker creates the effects in a film by montage. 153 The montage is created by the

146 Eisenstein, Bois, and Glenny, 116. 147 Ibid., 128. 148 Ibid. Accordingly, Didi-Huberman defines montage not as indistinct “assimilation” but it is “to make something

else understood, by showing this image’s difference from and link with that which surrounds it in this particular

case.” (Georges Didi-Huberman and Shane B. Lillis, Images in Spite of All : Four Photographs from Auschwitz

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 142). 149 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 56. 150 Ibid. 151 Ibid. 152 Friedberg, 126-127. 153 Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press,

2000), 128-139, 306-312, cited after Friedberg, 127-128.

Scheuermann 36

movement of the viewer (in order to film or take photos of the architectural space) and the

following assembling and linking of the distinct shots, that in turn becomes a space the viewer

moves through.

Friedberg points out that both these spaces are not only different from each other but

are also radically different to the space of the screen. In Colomina’s analogy;

the architectural ‘visitor’ is likened to a camera (taking either still or moving images), but

not the viewer of a photograph or the spectator of a film. […] Yet, unlike the camera’s

framed, mechanically recorded and reproduced view, the experience of architecture by a

human viewer is unframed, unrepeatable, transient. Both the ‘space of photography’ and

the ‘space of the movie camera’ are visual spaces, framed, time-shifted, reproduced.154

The crucial aspect of Friedberg's argument is the embodied difference between the architectural

visitor and the spectator of a framed screen image. The first produces perceptual consequences

by her mobility while the latter compensates her immobility through the virtual mobilities of

the moving images.155 This also points towards the key paradox of the movie camera’s mobility;

the camera allows fluid panning, i.e. movement through space, but is reduced to the fixed frame

of the screen.156

Bruno and Eisenstein use the term movement partly metaphorically and/or refer to

inner, mental and emotional movements – Bruno’s coined term “emotion” is most illustrative

of this strand of conceptualization. Friedberg’s emphasis on the immobility of the film spectator

and the perceptual consequences by the architectural spectator converges toward an important

aspect for the analysis presented here. Because inside Saydnaya, the spectator must indeed

involve in bodily motion in order to navigate around the 3D model, in order to make the images

move and access the video clips. What consequences does the interactivity of Saydnaya (and

other interactive websites or moving image projects) have for the concept of montage that is

based on the mobility of the images on the screen and their meaningful sequencing, as well as

the immobility of the spectator? However, movement in the case of Saydnaya are confined to

the hand and/or finger. Thus, theorizations of virtual reality experiences including the whole

body need further consideration elsewhere.

The term navigation appeared to me when writing about the experience of “walking”

around virtual Saydnaya. Here, we return to De Certeau’s distinction between maps and tours

154 Friedberg, 128. 155 Ibid., 133. 156 Ibid., 128.

Scheuermann 37

as cinematic descriptions that impose themselves, although I presented already Bruno’s critique

and emphasis that “seeing is going”. 157 When applying De Certeau’s map/tour distinction to

the elevated model of Saydnaya, with its designating location tags that give an overview of the

prison from the perspective of a hovering camera or drone, seems to resemble the map

description. Maps offer knowledge of an order of spaces, according to De Certeau.158 A

mapping description based on seeing would be for example “there is …” in order to point out

the existence and location of a place on a map. In contrast enunciations such as “you enter”,

“you go across” or “you turn” refer to the description as tour that is based on the practice of

walking. These directing enunciations can also be understood as actions of navigation. The

word navigation stems from the Latin navigatio, the noun of the verb navigare that means “to

sail, sail over, go by sea, steer a ship”. It consists of navis that means “ship” and the root of

agere that means “to set in motion, drive, drive forward”.159 Thus, navigation initially

described, and still does in many contexts, the action of sailing, travelling by ship, a voyage.

Since the 16th century the word referred mainly to travels by sea, later also the practice of

travelling by and steering an aircraft could be described by the word navigation. Crucial in this

context is that the art and science of giving directions, the process of locating a certain vessel

on sea or space and the act of map-reading are essential to all the definitions of navigation. 160

De Certeau’s tour-enunciations are directing ones. These can be found here when the spectator

enters a certain room/site in the 3D model by clicking on its hovering tag and can then move

around in the room which is manifested by a movement of the field of vision within the frame.

Whilst the movements are very limited, reduced to turning in different directions, they are still

actions based on tour-enunciations. Here De Certeau’s separation of seeing and going, map and

tour, becomes problematic when applied to film.161 What was perhaps less obvious when

applied to film or architectural structures, is the conflation of the physical act of turning or

walking and the act of seeing that is unavoidable here when analysing the navigation through

this three-dimensional animated space. Relating to the discussion above, I do not deny the

physical immobility of the film spectator, seated in front of a screen, pointed out by Friedberg.

The spectator and her immobility require consideration as an element within and of the

157 Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 245 (highlighting by original author). 158 De Certeau and Rendall, 119. 159 EtymOnline, ‘navigation,’ accessed April 10, 2019,

https://www.etymonline.com/word/navigation#etymonline_v_2335. 160 Oxford English Dictionary, ‘navigation,’ April 10, 2019,

http://www.oed.com.ezp.sub.su.se/view/Entry/125477?redirectedFrom=navigation&. 161 The differences between spatial practices within cinema (and its architecture) and within a city spaces need to

be acknowledged. Therefore, I want to stress that I do not argue that De Certeau’s map-tour distinction is invalid

generally but that complications occur when it is translated to cinematic architecture.

Scheuermann 38

architectural, material set up of a viewing situation. Nevertheless, as demonstrated here,

movement and vision are inevitably linked in Saydnaya, thus regarding this case study I side

with Bruno, who claims, “seeing is going”.

Concluding this section, it would be reductive to describe montage as the sequencing

through time and navigation as the sequencing through space; time and space are relevant in

both practices and they are inevitably linked, since every movement also has a temporality. But

time and space are mobilized in different ways. In montage it’s done by the temporal sequencing

of different images, shots, frames that (we) move through space. In navigation time is

sequenced by the directed movement across space (in the rhythm of the walking for example).

If we think about an analogue film strip or the screening of a film in an editing program the

linearity of the sequences is apparent. Strung in a row frame follows frame, site follows site.

We are moved from image to image. Rather than following a linear, time-progressive track,

time is spatialized in navigation. We move from image to image. Time becomes location-based.

Events in the past, their recollection in the present and the imagination of the future, linked in

a mutual and perpetual construction loop, are integrated on site in film as well as in interactive

virtual spaces. However, interactive virtual spaces demand that we act according to them in

order to proceed in the architecture of the site. As spectators we move differently through an

animated space that we can navigate. In order to understand these actual, physical movements

of filmic spectatorship better, let us turn to its haptics.

5.3. Haptic spectatorship

Deleuze reflects on the hand-eye relationship in his book on Francis Bacon and his artistic work.

He states, that, understanding the relationship between eye and hand it is not enough to say that

the eye judges and the hand executes. Based on art historian Aloïs Riegl, he distinguishes four

relationships between the hand and the eye (when painting): the digital, the tactile, the manual,

and the haptic.162

The digital describes the maximum subordination of the hand to the eye. The hand is

reduced to the finger and its function of pointing in visual space, thus it’s indexing function.

Through the digital relationship an ideal optical space that is perceived through optical code is

developed. In the tactile and the manual forms of relationship, the hand increasingly dominates

the eye; ranging from a “relaxed insubordination of the eye” (tactile) to the reversed relationship

162 Deleuze, 109.

Scheuermann 39

of the subordination of the eye to the hand (manual). The haptic then, describes a state where

there is no subordination in either direction. Deleuze writes,

[…] we will speak of the haptic whenever there is no longer a strict subordination in either

direction, either a relaxed subordination or a virtual connection, but when sight discovers

in itself a specific function of touch that is uniquely its own, distinct from its optical

function.163

As his main example for haptic art, Deleuze draws a line from Bacon’s artworks to Egyptian

art, more precisely the Egyptian bas-relief. With its flat surface the bas-relief lets the eye

function like a sense of touch and imposes a haptic function to the eye. Thereby, Deleuze

concludes that Egyptian art allows the joining of the senses of touch and sight.164

For the definition of haptics Laura Marks draws on Riegl as well as on Deleuze and

Guattari in her anthology Touch – Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (2002).165 While

I find Marks’ reading of the video haptics mostly persuasive, her occasional equation and

interchangeable use of the terms haptics and tactics are problematic. Marks writes that for

Deleuze and Guattari haptic and optical do not form a dichotomy but slide into one another.166

There is a risk here of misunderstanding the definition by Deleuze presented above. Haptic, for

Deleuze, is something rather outside, or, an in between state where something is neither digital

nor tactile nor manual. Where neither eye nor hand dominates the other. Nevertheless, Marks’

transfer of the haptic approach from painting and still images to cinema is of importance for

this thesis, and as such used with cautions to its limitations.

Marks defines haptic perception as the way we experience touch both on the surface of

and inside the body. Haptic visuality, contrasted to optical visuality that relies on the visual

sense figuration, draws also on sense experience of touch and kinesthetics. Here, the eyes

themselves function like organs of touch.167 Due to this drawing on other senses in haptic

visuality the viewer’s body is more obviously involved in the seeing experience than with

optical visuality.168 A haptic look moves on the plane surfaces of the screen before the viewer

comprehends what she is beholding. Rather than distinguishing form, haptic looking discerns

texture.169

163 Deleuze, 109-110. 164 Ibid., 85. 165 Marks, Touch. 166 Ibid., xii. 167 Ibid., 2. 168 Ibid., 2-3. 169 Ibid., 8.

Scheuermann 40

Accordingly,

[h]aptic images do not invite identification with a figure so much as they encourage a bodily

relationship between the viewer and the image. Thus it is less appropriate to speak of the

object of a haptic look than to speak of a dynamic subjectivity between looker and image.170

This dynamic subjectivity between spectator and (moving) images that is perceived with the

whole body, instead of only the eyes, leads to a haptic cinema that is something we interact

with rather than an illusion we enter into.171

But in what ways and when can virtual space be (perceived) haptic? One aspect is the

required interaction of the spectator’s hand in the process of watching since the computer screen

only reacts to the user’s touch/tactile input. 172 Manipulation through the hand or finger in order

to control the content or navigate the vision on screen is necessary. The spectator clicks and

drags via a touchpad or mouse to steer her field of vision. The visual input in turn contains the

information based on which she makes her decision which actions her hand/finger should

perform. The hand is subordinated to the eye, thus, this can be defined as a tactile perception.

The website of Saydnaya can be displayed on a computer as well as on mobile devices.

Thus, both navigation via a mouse or touchpad as well as “direct” navigation with the finger on

a touchscreen is possible. These practices contain different gestures, and I would argue, also

different ways of experiencing the virtual space. The tactile encounter of one’s finger and the

touch screen heighten the awareness of the materiality of the screen and the virtuality of the

images displayed (and navigated).173

Connected to this (im)materiality of spaces, we can access a haptic potential of

Saydnaya when we shift our focus to the appearance of the website. The one- to four-minute

long film clips are played in a window filling mode, which means the browser bar and possibly

other open tabs are still visible. Just as windows on a computer screen, tabs also overlap either

in front of each other or on top of each other (dependent on one’s perspective). Friedberg

connects this overlapping (of windows, but here tabs) on the screen with multitasking and what

Erwin Panofsky coined as the dynamization of space (and the spatialization of time). We can

be at two or more places at the same time, in two or more time frames, in two or more modes

of identity.174 As a spectator/user I am aware of the various other virtual spaces potentially

170 Marks, Touch, 3. 171 Ibid., 18. 172 Friedberg, 233. 173 Cf. ibid., 6. 174 Ibid., 231-235.

Scheuermann 41

available to me. While the three-dimensional perspectivity of the virtual space of the Saydnaya

model allows the illusion of immersion, the materiality of the overlapping tabs, layered upon

each other or stacked, makes the spectator aware of their surfaces and the surface of the screen

itself (Fig. 1). Friedberg writes:

Although the algorithmic constructions found in video games, in Quick Time panoramas,

in virtual reality systems continue to rely on digital simulacra of perspectival space, not all

digital space is designed to suggest three dimensions. Instead, the vernacular “space” of the

computer screen has more in common with surfaces of cubism – frontality, suppression of

depth, overlapping layers – than with extended depth of Renaissance perspective.175

Frontality, the suppression of depth – as it can be found also in the Egyptian bas-relief and

Francis Bacon’s artworks – and the overlapping of layers, all invite a haptic look that rests on

surfaces and touches upon materiality instead of “entering” into the deep space.

Fig. 1 Overlapping tabs

Source: Forensic Architecture

5.4. Haptic materiality

As spectators we do not only encounter the witness testimony but also gain insights into the

participatory modelling process. Seated in front of several computer screens the former

detainees direct and correct the architect, adding details and describing locations of objects

within the rooms created. Watching the virtual model be created using the human hand, dictated

by the prisoners, through multiple tools; pencil and paper or touchpad, makes us aware of its

175 Friedberg, 2-3.

Scheuermann 42

constructed character even more so than the media specific characteristic already achieves. I

also want to stress that every film image – analogue or digital – is always constructed through

technological devices and the choices made by the cinematographer, for example, when it

comes to the occasion, perspective, framing, depth of focus and so on.

This heightened awareness of the constructiveness of the images extends or rather stands in a

mutually affecting relationship with the haptic materiality of the virtual images.

The opacity of the slowly rotating 3D we see on the start page in the explore mode can

be controlled by a sliding regulator in the upper right corner. By pulling the regulator to the left

the transparency of the model is increased, i.e. the opaque surfaces of the rooftop level dissolve,

the view of the architectural setting of the rooms inside is accessible, the locations where video

clips can be watched are highlighted in red and tagged (Fig. 2). Also, the satellite image of the

surrounding landscape appears. Shifting the regulator to the right, the landscape dissolves, the

3D model becomes isolated, or dislocated, the surfaces of the outer walls of the prison model

become opaque and the locations tags disappear (Fig. 3). One could interpret this as a reflection

on the accessibility, visibility and possibilities of localization and contextualization of the

Saydnaya prison. Whether or not such a reflection was intended or not, what is mobilized here

is the awareness of the controllability of the animated model as well as its material malleability.

Similar potentials are activated when the 3D model gradually elevates from the satellite image

in the clip Walk through the building. Attention is called to the surfaces of the model, thus the

virtual walls. The smooth and even surface of the model contrasts visually to the rather pixelated

quality of the satellite image. Both the focus on the surfaces and the awareness of the different

qualities of the images invite a haptic look. This haptic look is not only invited by the navigable

model but by certain sequences in the video clips. In Fear starts in the afternoon, Anas places

the 13 detainees in a 360-degree rotatable and isolated animated construction of a group cell.

The rotatability resembles the possibility to turn the room around like an object, or matter, in

one’s hands. Hand and eye are equally engaged in the perception of the images whose virtual

materiality is emphasized; deriving from this argument, a haptic perception is constituted.

Another example that can be found in the same video clip, is the appearance of a pixel grid in

one of the animated sequences. Malleable, patches of the underlying pixel grid appear and glide

over the screen, like a distortion it directs the attention of the spectator to the materiality of the

screen.176

176 See also Marks, who notes that in moments of distortion or computer crashes we become more aware of the

materiality of the technology that we are using. (Marks, Touch, x-xi).

Scheuermann 43

Just as the isolated, rotatable model of the cell becomes virtual matter, so too do the

animated bodies of the detainees. The detainees are represented by black figures that show no

distinctive physical traits; thus, no recognition of individual characters is possible and

identification with them complicated. This artistic choice might be based on the fact that the

detainees were mainly kept in darkness, so the visual recognition of one another was

impeded.177 The even black surface of the bodies and their stiff and rough movements

emphasize their artificial nature. The virtuality of the bodies becomes even more obvious when

their construction grid, consisting connecting lines where different surfaces meet. Here, the

virtuality is mobilized in the same manner as discussed concerning the pixel grid (Fig. 4 and

5). By making its otherwise invisible construction network visible, attention is directed toward

the surface, here, the bodily figure.

177 See, for example, Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison, ‘Where are we?,’ accessed March 13, 2019,

https://saydnaya.amnesty.org/?kind=video&id=03.

Scheuermann 44

Fig. 3 Opaque model

Source: Forensic Architecture

Fig. 2 Transparent model

Source: Forensic Architecture

Scheuermann 45

Fig. 4 Body construction and rotatable room

Source: Forensic Architecture

Fig. 5 Pixel grid

Source: Forensic Architecture

Scheuermann 46

5.5. Re-animations and re-enactments

In total 14 video clips are located within the 3D model, each about 2-4 minutes long. Two of

the detainees, Anas and Diab, reveal their faces in the clips while Jamal, Salam and Samer

decided to stay anonymised. Different ways of anonymisation, common in documentary film

are applied here. The witnesses’ faces remain in the shadow and only their contours appear

against the background light or their faces are blurred. Close-ups of their hands, fingers

interlaced on the lap or actively sketching a room, and the voice of the former detainees create

reference and identification possibilities for the viewer. In animated documentaries animation

is often used for anonymisation purposes.178 It is therefore noteworthy that “classical”

documentary tools are used in Saydnaya to protect the identities of those witnesses who wanted

to stay anonymous.

In order to explain their experiences, the witnesses imitate certain sounds, for example,

that one of a specific torture tool when landing on the body of a detainee. In another case, Anas

re-enacts how he whispered to his cell co-detainee, reproducing the wording, volume and way

of speaking. These are not elaborated re-enactments in the sense that an entire situation is

restaged. Rather, they resemble an illustrative and very active form of telling a story.

Animated sequences with detailed soundtracks give a visual and auditive interpretation

that correspond to the testimony given. Sometimes the spoken testimony also functions as

commentary voice-over to the animated moving images. When Samer and Jamal, for example,

speak about the tremendous thirst they had to suffer in the video One drop of water, they

describe how they began to hallucinate waterfalls after six days of water cut-off. We see water

drops running down a dark concrete wall, while Samer speaks about his physical and mental

distress. After six days the detainees raised their voices, cell after cell joined in the call for

water. Cross-referencing Samer’s and Jamal’s testimonies, both imitating the desperate call for

water, their voices overlap and are repeated on the audio track to re-create the multivocality.

This audio overlap functions as a transmission from a shot of Jamal to a shot of Samer, as

(re)animation or representation of the happenings and fulfils an important task on the level of

claim-making. Through the cross-referencing of the two different testimonies, supporting each

other, their evidentiary value is strengthened. Simultaneously, the editing of the sound becomes

obvious; here, no seamless transitions are aimed for but the arrangement of the auditive

statements is “revealed”.

178 Jonathan Rozenkrantz, ‘Expanded Epistemologies: Animation Meets Live Action in Contemporary Swedish

Documentary Film’, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 6, no. 2 (January 2016): 192,

https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca.6.2.189_1.

Scheuermann 47

Salam tells about the beatings right after his arrival in Saydnaya.179 He was blindfolded

while being beaten up by the guards. In the attempt to give the viewer an impression of what

Salam’s perception on a visual and auditive level might have been is resembled, a textile texture

makes any recognition of the environment impossible and lets through only abstract lights (Fig.

6). In the background several indistinctive voices speak in Arabic while Salam recalls the

humiliation of the torture.

The examples given correspond to the possibilities of animated documentary to show

subjective perspectives and mental states. The creative imagination of the animator and sound

designer seek to translate the witness’ testimony into images and soundtracks, perceivable and

available to an audience. I will only briefly touch upon immersion as another cinematic device

applied since an in-depth discussion would exceed the limitations of this thesis. In the animated

sequence of One drop of water, for example, the camera pans into the opening of the water tap

until the screen is entirely black. As viewers, we potentially feel absorbed – immersed – by the

image, or rather, its movement. Immersion is at work also when entering Saydnaya in the

explore mode; a small pop-up informs the user/spectator that she can move the camera by click

and drag, and that the interactive documentary is best experienced with headphones. While the

initial sound quality of the film does not change, the interface of the dispositive – here a

179 Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison, ‘Arrival,’ accessed February 18, 2019,

https://saydnaya.amnesty.org/?kind=video&id=00

Fig. 6 Blindfolded

Source: Forensic Architecture

Scheuermann 48

computer or mobile device and eventually headphones – are a crucial factor. In many cases the

sound playback by headphones allows a more intense and nuanced listening experience. The

exclusion of the spectator’s/user’s surroundings through the use of headphones, however, is the

most palpable effect of their application. The interrelation of the cinematic dispositive (of

mobile screens) and immersion are interesting and will hopefully find further attention in

upcoming research about Saydnaya.

5.6. Embodied spectatorship

In their analysis of the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir by Ari Folman, Landesman

and Bendor, they exemplify the capacity of animated documentary to foster a novel relationship

between viewer and film. This new relationship moves away from faith in the authority of

indexical images and moves towards trust in the documentary to make a truth claim that reflects

the world in a complex and sophisticated way. Landesman and Bendor claim that not despite

but precisely because of its unique aesthetic choices such as innovative animation techniques

and the mixing of reality and fantasy, Waltz with Bashir produces a trustworthy representation

of reality.180

Landesman and Bendor work in a tradition of phenomenological accounts of cinema,

endorsing material hermeneutics over linguistic hermeneutics that aim to explain how meaning

is experienced as a series of somatic effects, produced by the film. From this perspective a film

is inseparable from the way it is experienced by an active and embodied spectator who is

situated in a specific historical, institutional, locational and social context. 181 Landesman and

Bendor refer to Vivian Sobchack and her understanding of the embodied cinematic spectator (I

have discussed Deleuze’s and Mark’s related concepts in the chapters 5.3 and 5.4) as a

cinesthetic subject characterised by its ability to translate seeing into touching and vice versa

on a preconscious level.182 Accepting this terminology; as cinesthetic subjects we are moved

somatically by diegetic events that in turn manifest the sensorial continuum that links the filmic

180 Landesman and Bendor, 354. 181 Ibid., 362. 182Vivian Carol Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 2004), 53-84. This neologism derives from cinema and the concepts of synaesthesia and

coenaesthesia. Both latter concepts foreground the complexity and richness of the bodily sensorial experience

that grounds our particular experience of cinema. Most importantly they both point to ways in which “cinema

uses our dominant senses of vision and hearing to speak comprehensibly to our other senses” (Sobchack, 67). If

the stimulation of one sense causes perception in another in form of an involuntary experience we define this as

synaesthesia. Furthermore, synaesthesia can refer to the use of visual metaphors to describe an olfactory

sensorial impression. Coenaesthesia describes the perception of one’s whole sensorial being, comparable to the

open and yet non-hierarchical sensual condition of a child at birth. Senses are arranged in a hierarchical structure

later, informed by cultural immersion and practice. (Sobchack, 67-69).

Scheuermann 49

body to the corporeal body of the spectator.183 As the cinematic spectator is always situated in

certain contexts, she weaves together the individually embodied experience with collective

experience. Through this process of weaving or integration the political consciousness of the

viewer is affected.184

Landesman and Bendor argue that Waltz with Bashir draws the body of the spectator

into a viewing experience with an intensity that is uncharacteristic of non-animated

documentary films. They claim that it is the lack of immediate indexicality of the animated

image that offers the viewer amusing but also potentially radical embodied experiences while

at the same time the animated nature of the images, especially bodies, offer a shielding distance

that allows reflection.185 The lack of commitment to mimetic realism in the depiction of reality

expands the embodied cognition and identification and is not devaluing it.186 Landsman and

Bendor conclude:

By its investment of spectatorial experience into the rearticulation of a historical narrative, the film becomes a politically creative process. As such, Waltz with Bashir makes a meaningful and important contribution to the continuous shaping of the first Lebanon War's collective memory and the formation of Israeli identity.

187

In Saydnaya we also encounter images that lack immediate indexicality, I argue that especially

the black, anonymous bodies produce a “shielding distance” while simultaneously bearing the

potential of embodied experiences. These embodied experiences are facilitated by the

spectator’s navigation through the prison, which causes a higher engagement of the spectator’s

body. Instead of mobilizing fictionalized accounts and metaphorical images like in Waltz with

Bashir, in Saydnaya, primarily the interactivity and the haptic materiality of the animated

images are at work. The immersive sequences in the video clips correspond more directly to

the findings of Landesman and Bendor.

Mimetic realism is not necessarily the aim of the prison modelling, especially the torture

tools and represented bodies do clearly not seek to achieve mimetic illusion. Nevertheless,

accuracy seems important in the remodelling of the prison space. The conjunction of the

disparate testimonies and other sources like the satellite image of the prison seek to create a

representation of the space that is as close to reality as possible. This relates to the investigative

function that the animation techniques perform here.

183 Sobchack; Landesman and Bendor, 363. 184 Landesman and Bendor, 363. 185 Ibid., 363, 366. 186 Ibid., 367. 187 Ibid., 368.

Scheuermann 50

Thus, I conclude that due to its engagement of the spectator and her body by means of

some of the formal strategies that have been suggested by Landesman and Bendor, Saydnaya

has the potential to contribute to socially shared memories of the war in Syria. Having said this,

Saydnaya extends its strategies by its application of animation and sound technologies not only

as representation, but as tools of investigation; this joining of functions is a basic principle of

forensic aesthetics.

Scheuermann 51

6. Claiming truth: testimony and

evidence

6.1. Earwitness testimony

There was next to no daylight inside the Saydnaya prison and the detainees were made to cover

their eyes with their hands whenever a guard entered the room. Furthermore, speaking was

prohibited. Through this extreme restriction of seeing, and the silence, prisoners in Saydnaya

developed an intensified experience of sound. They became attuned to any minute sound, could

distinguish guards by the sound of their footsteps and torture tools by the sound caused when

hitting a detainee a few cells away. Forensic Architecture audio investigator and artist Lawrence

Abu Hamdan developed techniques to capture these auditory memories, one could call them

“ear-witness testimony” and reconstruct the architecture of the prison through sound. These

techniques contain three main processes:

- The witnesses listened to tones of different decibel levels and were then asked to match

them to the levels of specific incidents inside the prison.

- The usage of “echo profiling” in order to determine the size of spaces such as cells,

stairwells and corridors. This mainly involved playing different reverberations and

asking witnesses to match them with sounds they remembered hearing in the prison.

- The usage of “sound artefacts” to simulate sounds such as doors, locks and footsteps. 188

These techniques bear the possibility to elicit witness testimony based on auditory memories.

Those auditory and sound findings are interlaced with and integrated into the visual

architectural model, even more so, they function as basis for this model.

What does the emergence of ear-witness testimony mean for the role of testimony in

social memory and truth claiming processes? Shoshana Felman writes in her canonical book

Testimony: crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history (1991), which she

published together with Dori Laub, that bearing witness means to take responsibility for the

truth, as implicitly speaking from within the legal pledge of the witness’s oath. To testify here

does not mean to simply report a fact or event but mobilize memories in order to address

188 Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison, ‘Methodology,’ accessed March 17, 2019,

https://saydnaya.amnesty.org/en/methodology.html.

Scheuermann 52

another, or appeal to a community. This appeal to a community points towards the impersonal

nature of testimony, in the sense that it goes beyond a single biography. This does not mean,

however, that the act of giving testimony can be carried out by someone else; testimony is

unique. This uniqueness derives from the witness’s irreplaceable performance of the act of

seeing with her own eyes and speaking with one’s own voice.189

In the legal, philosophical and epistemological tradition of the Western world, witnessing is based on, and is formally defined by, first-hand seeing. ‘Eyewitness testimony’ is what constitutes the most decisive law of evidence in courtrooms.190

The privileged status of the visual sense is indisputable here. Does ear-witness testimony, as

we encounter it in Saydnaya, challenge this privileged status of the visual sense? And how does

this affect its potential and ways of claiming truth within the documentary? Because, as Felman

continues, film is “the art par excellence which, like the courtroom, although for different

purposes, calls upon a witnessing by seeing.”191

6.2. Sound as evidence

In order to turn up the volume the role of sound in the creation of truth claims I will introduce

another artwork by the audio investigator Lawrence Abu Hamdan. I experienced his artwork

Earshot in 2017 at Moderna Museet in Stockholm as part of the exhibition Manipulate the

World and was immediately intrigued by Abu Hamdan’s reflection on how visibility and

visualization function in the legal context. It made me think about how evidence is constructed

both in and by legal institutions, and, on a wider scale, in and by societies.

The human rights organization Defence for Children International contacted Forensic

Architecture, concerned about the killing of two Palestinian teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and

Mohamad Abu Daher, in the occupied West Bank in May 2014 by Israeli soldiers. By using

audio-ballistic analysis of recordings of the gunshots, Abu Hamdan investigated whether the

Israeli soldiers had used rubber bullets as they asserted or if they had broken the law by firing

live ammunition. The teenagers had been unarmed and died shortly after the shootings.

Abu Hamdan visualized the sound frequencies of the recorded gunshots that were

available through a film clip that was taken during the incident by a witness (Fig.7). The detailed

acoustic analysis established that the soldiers had not only fired live ammunition but, moreover,

189 Shoshana Felman, ‘The Return of the Voice – Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah”’, in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing

in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (New York: Routledge, 1991),

204-6. 190 Felman, 207. 191 Ibid.

Scheuermann 53

had tried to disguise these shots in order to make them sound as rubber bullets. What could not

be acoustically perceived by the human ear (the difference between rubber ammunition and live

ammunition) and had been made visually perceivable. Later these visualisations became a

crucial piece of evidence used by international news agencies such as CNN, forcing the Israeli

government to renounce its denial of this accusation. Additionally, the investigation was

presented before the US Congress as an example of Israel’s contravention of the American-

Israeli arms agreement.192

This case shows how the translation of one

materiality to another (sound to visuals), described

above as a central means of forensic aesthetics, is at

work in practice and effective in court. Saydnaya is

not dealing with the material translation from sound

recordings to image but from auditive memory to

image. However, in both cases, the visualization is key

in order to make the case, while in turn no image could

have been created without the sound evidence or

testimony.

As the Saydnaya model unites several witness

testimonies with other sources, such as the satellite

image of the prison it could be described as an

enriched or joint testimony. Weizman states

accordingly: “Architectural modelling thus bridged

the otherwise separate and distinct functions of

testimony and evidence.”193 It is interesting that Weizman points out that the Saydnaya could,

ideally, be deployed as evidence in court. Whilst still hypothetical, given no such trial is planned

and the crises in Syria is still acute, virtual images (interlaced with testimony) are imaginable

as valid evidence in a legal case. This in turn indicates shifts in what societies believe and accept

to be of evidentiary value and how such value is created.

192 Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Earshot, video and sound installation. Web documentation accessed May 10, 2019,

http://lawrenceabuhamdan.com/new-page-1/. 193 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 87.

Fig. 7 Earshot

Source: Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Scheuermann 54

6.3. Indexicality and movement

Tess Takahashi claims that in times of uncertain images, audio tracks can seemingly form a

tentative ground for certainty.194 While Takahashi acknowledges the importance of rhetorical

strategies in the making of truth claims, here her understanding of certainty of sound is based

on faith in its indexical relationship with reality (see discussion of faith and trust in 5.6

Embodied spectatorship). Although she describes the ability of animated documentary to invite

reflection about the editing, thus fabrication, of the audio track, Takahashi argues that the audio

track evokes the particularities and authority of individual voice and experience. Thus, sound,

especially the sound of the human voice, re-establishes a faithful relationship to the indexical

status of sound and therefore anchors the animated images that are unsettling this relationship

(to a certain extent).195 In this sense, sound can anchor the non-fictional character of the visual

representation in the real through acoustic indexicality.196

Landesman and Bendor annotate the possibility that the traditional relationship between

image and sound in documentary might be overthrown by animated documentary images: while

in Griersonian documentary the omnipresent narrator has often been regarded as the interpretive

component guiding the viewer and “controlling” the image, it now becomes possible to imagine

animated images as an accompanying add-on that interprets indexical sound.197 Considering

sound’s vital connection to the real, could animated documentaries be described as illustrated

radio documentaries?198 While I argue this is an oversimplification, as images are not merely

illustrative and the relationship between image and sound more complex, the question points

towards interesting dynamics and underlying structures of how trustworthiness and

believability are established in animated documentary. Jonathan Rozenkrantz agrees that

hearing the memories told by the people who have actually experienced them adds to the

credibility of animated documentary: “Sound, we could say, fills the gap that the non-indexical

image has left.”199

Until now the underlying assumption of this discussion of indexicality was that digitally

animated images lack indexicality. Tom Gunning critically scrutinizes the concept of

194 Takahashi, 235. 195 Ibid., 240-41. 196 Rozenkrantz, ‘Colourful Claims’. See also Landesman and Bendor, 357-59. 197 Landesman and Bendor, 368, footnote 3. 198 See also the masterclass panel discussion recorded at that the Between the Lines festival 2013 touching the

intersection of discourses about loosening the indexical bind, new perceptions of truth claims within

documentaries and the contemporary debates about fake news and reliable journalism (Between the Lines

Festival, ‘Panel Discussion: From Left Field – New Hybrid Alternatives,’ 2017, accessed October 18, 2018,

http://dochouse.org/online/video/filmed-masterclass/between-lines-2013-left-field.). 199 Rozenkrantz, ‘Colourful Claims’.

Scheuermann 55

indexicality termed by Charles Peirce and the role it has played in cinema’s history and theory.

Peirce differentiates between iconic, indexical and symbolic signs. Iconic signs refer to the

thing it denotes merely by the virtue of characters of its own. In other words, the icon physically

resembles the thing it stands for. This thing does not necessarily have to exist. Indexical signs

in contrast refer to signs that are actually affected by the object they denote. Symbolic signs are

arbitrary ones, their meaning is denoted through convention or what Peirce calls “law”. An

example of symbolic signs are words as they stand for a thing or idea but do not show any

formal resemblance (that the word “bottle” designates the physical bottle or the idea about it is

arbitrary but fixated by linguistic convention). 200 Consequently, the indexical will be most

relevant to my discussion.

Gunning identifies the opposition of the digital and the indexical that has found fertile

ground in film theory as highly problematic.201 In a digital image, it is not the light-sensitive

emulsion that is affected by the luminous object in front of the camera, instead the images are

formed through data about light that is encoded in a matrix of numbers. Contesting various

accounts in film theory, Gunning argues that the storage in form of numerical data does not

eliminate indexicality and convincingly points out that digital photographs serve as passport

photographs and legal evidence, just as analogue photographs do.202 He stresses that an index

does not need to resemble the thing it represents and that an image’s indexicality shouldn’t be

confused with its iconicity.203

Accordingly, Trond Lundemo points out that Peirce’s understanding of the index was

broader than its adopted versions in film theory. Peirce also included gestural and linguistic

pointers (‘there!’) and hailing gestures; as such the pointed finger becomes an indexical sign.204

Considering this deictic, or indicative, function of the indexical sign, an understanding of digital

photographic (moving) images as indexical can be facilitated. And even if one followed the

trace function, as done in most film theory, the digital camera still captures a trace of the light

in front of its lens. The fact that they are recorded through a different material process than that

200 Charles S. Peirce and Justus Buchler, Philosophical Writings of Peirce (Dover: Dover publications, 1955),

102-3. 201 Tom Gunning, ‘What’s the Point of an Index? Or Faking Photographs’, in Still Moving: Between Cinema and

Photography, ed. Karen Redrobe Beckman and Jean Ma (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008),

http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822391432, 24. 202 Gunning ‘What’s the Point of an Index? Or Faking Photographs’, 24. 203 Gunning ‘What’s the Point of an Index? Or Faking Photographs’, 25. 204 Trond Lundemo, ‘Digital Technologies and the End(s) of Film Theory’, in The Anthem Handbook of Screen

Theory, ed. Vaughan Hunter and Tom Conley, (Anthem Press 2018), 217, accessed May 9, 2019,

/core/books/anthem-handbook-of-screen-theory/digital-technologies-and-the-ends-of-film-

theory/042458C0F322C40CCF2A3FED20A5A37C.

Scheuermann 56

performed by an analogue camera does not disrupt the indexical relationship.205 The situation

becomes more complex when we turn from digital photography towards computer generated

images (CGI), which are not indexical as they are programmed in a computer and not a trace of

light stemming from an exterior source.206

Gunning pointedly notes that much of film theory immediately excludes animated film,

given that cinema was first understood as animated pictures and CGI animation has become

omnipresent in most feature films.207 The challenge to the idea of indexicality by animated

images, fuelled by the proliferation of new digital animation technologies – and I would add

the emergence of the genre of animated documentary – calls for a reconsideration and a renewed

investigation of the question: What is cinema?

Gunning favours a phenomenological approach and suggests that theories of cinematic

motion as formulated for example by Christian Metz can help us to understand and reformulate

several theoretical and aesthetic issues concerning cinema and its nature. Gunning claims if

cinema was approached as a form of animation, then cinematic motion would become primary

instead of photographic imagery, including the question of the indexical value of such. Metz

claims that the motion we see in a film is not a representation but real, i.e. motion cannot be

derived from a static presentation. That means that on a visual level no difference exists between

watching a film of a person running and seeing an actual person running. Although motion in a

film is visual, the spectator also senses this motion physically just as one would observe a

moving thing in reality. Thus, cinematic motion allows us for the consideration of spectators as

embodied beings and the experience of kinesthesia goes beyond a sole focus on the visual.208

If we take Metz’ phenomenological stance and consider movement as the key agent in

cinema’s impression of reality, new ways to describe cinematic realism emerge. In cinema we

are dealing with realism, not “reality itself”, i.e. we deal with impressions of reality, both

material and mental. 209 In order to create mental impressions of reality, cinematic images do

not require an upholding of an indexical relationship to reality (despite their potential to do so).

Such impressions of reality can be achieved by images working on the level of iconicity or, as

suggested by Metz and Gunning, by considering the kinesthetic, embodied experience of the

205 Lundemo, 217-218. 206 Ibid., 218. Interesting is also the borderline case of motion capture animation, as Lundemo notes, because it

retains an indexical aspect as it traces a movement photographically (i.e. through the inscription of light). 207 Tom Gunning, ‘Moving Away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality’, Differences 18, no. 1 (1

January 2007): 34-38. 208 Gunning, ‘Moving Away from the Index’, 39. 209 Ibid., 44. Gunning refers here to Christian Metz, ‘On the Impression of Reality in the Cinema.’, in Film

Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema., trans. Michael Taylor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974).

Scheuermann 57

images by the spectator. The possibilities to create persuasion are thus not (entirely) dependent

on the indexical value of the images but also shaped by their appearance and perception.

Referring to the previous discussion, we trust the film rather than that it is ontologically true.

The argument I make here becomes even clearer when we turn towards the difference

between fiction and documentary film. As Gunning correctly notes, it remains unclear how the

index functions within a diegesis of a fictional film. 210 Does the image then point toward the

diegetic, fictional world with its characters or to the reality of the studio and its actresses?

Fictional and non-fictional live-action footage is equally indexical; nonetheless, they establish

different degrees of trust in their images. Such trust or persuasion of a statement about the world

is constructed discursively, formally and rhetorically by the film but is not entirely dependent

on the indexical relationship of its images.

6.4. Testimony and relative truth

The persuasive value of testimony foremost depends on the fact that statements are made by

what is believed to be the real, living agent: the witness.211 Although the sound recordings of

witness testimony have a stronger indexical bond to reality than the animated images, they are

still edited and fabricated – bearing in mind also that language itself always filters, shapes and

fabricates what is formulated through it. The relative truth of language requires consideration

when dealing with verbalised testimony in documentary film.

Weizman describes a “forensic turn” that emerged in the 1980s and changed the role of

witness testimony. By giving probative value to physical evidence, for example by

implementing the usage of DNA profiling in criminal investigations, the epistemologies and

ethical positions of human rights movements, until then mainly based on human witness

testimony, was challenged and required re-positioning.212 Witness testimony is based on

memory but “[m]emories of violence are rarely straightforward records or internalized

representations that are stored in an orderly manner and easily retrieved. Memory, like matter,

is plastic, continuously morphing, and affected by violence.”213 Precisely due to this malleable

quality, or texture, of memory and its complication by trauma, forensic practices seek to bypass

human testimony and create or extract physical evidence decoupled from fragile human

memory. However, forensics can never fully overcome the complexities of the subject or the

210 Gunning, ‘Moving Away from the Index’, 47. 211 Rozenkrantz, ‘Colourful Claims’. 212 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 82. 213 Ibid., 87.

Scheuermann 58

fragility of witness memory. Just as testimony is interdependent on language and its ambiguity,

forensically presented material reality is also filtered through language. Additionally, material

based evidence remains qualified by margins of error and indeterminations and “expert”

forensic testimony is prone to errors just as every other human testimony.214 In this regard,

Forensic Architecture states clearly that the presentation of evidence, thus, shouldn’t be

mistaken for “positivism”, i.e. as a form of evidence that pretends to overcome language

through its materiality and access a priori knowledge without any mediation. Instead forensic

aesthetics and evidence are the “art of making claims using matter and media, code and

calculation, narrative and performance.”215 Put differently, truth claims, just as every

documentary utterance, are discursive acts shaped and (re)negotiated by discursive structures,

agents, institutions and its (pre)conditions.216 This, in turn, neither means that there is no

material reality or lead us to total constructivism. It does, however, draws our attention to its

shaping agents and dynamics and the crucial aspect that both evidence and testimony are always

mediated. Weizman puts emphasis on language as a medium; I would like to stress that

(moving) images also have a “grammar”, certain motives that re-occur, compositional elements

that follow certain patterns, etc.217 Documentary filmmaking as well as the construction,

presentation and contestation of a piece of evidence, testimony or a whole case in court aims to

tell a persuasive story about reality and seeks to convince their audiences of the believability

and reliability of the argument made. Persuasion is, thus, also achieved by artistic or expressive

means in documentary film and not entirely dependent, nevertheless shaped by its indexical

relationship to reality.218

Before I continue the discussion of the ear- and eye-witness testimony, I want to point

out another relevant aspect of testimony, namely; the value of giving testimony in its own right.

Dori Laub speaks about the “imperative to tell” one’s story in order to survive and to know

one’s story.219 On the other hand, the impossibility of telling due to the incapability of “thought,

memory and speech” prohibit the ability to fully capture the (traumatic) experience one aims to

testify to.220 It is essential for the narrative that what “could not be articulated” is actually told,

214 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 83. 215 Ibid. 216 Cf. Renov, 27-9. 217 Cf. Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies : An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (London:

Sage, 2007). 218 Cf. Renov. 219 Dori Laub, ‘An Event without a Witness: Truth, Testimony and Survival’, in Testimony: Crises of Witnessing

in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, ed. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (New York: Routledge, 1991),

78. 220 Laub, 78-9.

Scheuermann 59

transmitted and heard.221 Dori Laub, founder of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust

Testimonies at Yale University, claims that endeavours such as this archive supplement for the

survivor’s need for witnesses and the historical lack of witnessing. As such they set the stage

for the reoccurrence of the event, now in the presence of a witness.222 The (interview)listener –

i.e. including the film spectator – takes on the responsibility for bearing witness, at least to a

certain extent, that before the narrator (survivor) bore alone and therefore could not carry out.

Thus, the coming together of survivor and listener makes the repossession of the act of

witnessing possible and, therefore, Laub argues that testimony needs to be understood as a

historical event in its own right.

Furthermore, the repossession of one’s own life story through the act of giving

testimony is a form of action in order to “continue and complete the process of survival.” 223

What ultimately matters in all processes of witnessing, spasmodic and continuous, conscious and unconscious, is not simply the information, the establishment of the facts, but the experience itself of living through testimony, giving testimony. The testimony is, therefore, the process by which the narrator (the survivor) reclaims his [sic!] position as witness […]224

Giving testimony is a dialogic process, between narrator and listener, from individual(s) to a

community. In this dialogic process two different worlds are explored and reconciled, the past

world and one that is, both remaining disparate.225 As we continue to discuss the relation

between the visual and the auditive sense in testimony giving and evidence making, we can

note that the animated documentary Saydnaya fulfils a function within social memory in the

sense that it allows testimony to be given by the former detainees and to be witnessed by its

film spectators.

6.5. (Un)Certain images

Already by the mid-1990s Brian Winston observed growing anxiety over the veracity of the

documentary image.226 Reality television and “factual entertainment” concurrently rose.227

221 Laub, 85. 222 Ibid. It is important to note that Laub differentiates between three different categories of witnesses. On the first

level one can bear witness to an experience one lived oneself. He argues that this kind of self-witnessing failed

in case of the Holocaust survivors so that they could not even become the witnesses to their own lives. Therefore,

there were no witnesses to be found before testimonies could be given and received by another person as witness

of the witness. 223 Ibid. 224 Ibid. 225 Ibid., 91. 226 Roe, Animated Documentary, 171; DelGaudio, 190.’ 227 Roe, Animated Documentary, 171.

Scheuermann 60

Both, factual entertainment and animation approached society’s greater awareness of the

malleable and constructed nature of images and representations, but in very different ways.

While the former used stylistic and formal devices to created “realistic” images, the latter draws

its potential out of its obviously constructed form. Additionally, Honess Roe states that,

[t]he convergence of animation and documentary into the cohesive form of animated documentary […] is also a demonstration of our increasingly sophisticated ability to interpret complex audiovisual texts and our growing demand for images that challenge our conception of representation.”

228

This demand for challenging images and the increasing questioning of the veracity of images

appear as two sides of the same coin. The emergence of animated documentary and the social

developments are interdependent and invited film scholars to discuss newly emerging ways and

forms of conveying “truths” in animated documentary. Tess Takahashi’s study on speculative

documentary is one of them. Takahashi’s point of departure for her essay is that animation is

used in many documentaries to explicitly address the anxieties about a politically unstable

world in which not only goods but also images and people circulate more freely than ever before

but in ways that are also more and more monitored and regimented. She suggests that these

larger anxieties are dramatized in the ways that animation problematizes the documentary

image’s rhetorical and “indexical guarantees”. The international movement of images and

documentary guarantees both are concerned with questions of security and insecurity. Linked

to that, Takahashi proposes that animation has emerged as an important practice in

contemporary documentary, particularly those examining life in wartime, partly because digital

animation allows analysis of and control over both the movement of images and the movement

within images.229

Framed and exemplified by three case studies, Takahashi identifies a rhetoric of

speculation in contemporary documentary film. By means of a “historical toolbox of

documentary techniques and modes” rhetorical guarantees that are associated with material

documentation such as letters, interviews and indexical photographs are interrogated.230

Speculative documentaries often use the formal malleability of animated images to emphasize

the uncertainty of the information we encounter through such documents and in the

documentary film more generally.231 Rhetorical strategies of form and image in speculative

documentary aim to capture an “emotional register of factual events through specific aesthetic

228 Roe, Animated Documentary, 171. 229 Takahashi, 232. 230 Ibid., 235. 231 Ibid.

Scheuermann 61

forms.”232 When digital animation is utilized in ways that keep meaning and information from

becoming settled and entirely certain, but continue moving and remaining questionable, also

“suggests that the act of producing documentary guarantees is also a moving historical process,

and as such never secure.”233 Furthermore, Takahashi suggests that “[i]n reading the structures

of feeling present in speculative documentary, we uncover a larger epistemological shift in

which feeling vies with vision for securing the documentary guarantee.”234

Accordingly, Stella Bolaki emphasizes the “degree of self-reflexivity” that animated

documentary bears and which

invites viewers to question what we are or should be watching. […] [I]t is this alternative aspect of self-reflexivity, facilitated though not strictly determined by the medium of animation, that adds to the ethical and political force of these documentaries.235

Bridging technological aspects of the medium and ethical as well as political impact of these

films, Bolaki’s quote ties back to the initially mentioned social and cultural preconditions or

maybe even needs for such new perspectives enabled by animated documentaries.

The malleability of animated images, testimony and memories are present in Saydnaya,

as well as a self-conscious reflection about the filmmaking process. Nevertheless, I argue that

the forensic methods and filmic strategies in Saydnaya do not aim to unsettle information, quite

the opposite, they seek to strengthen their case. The forensic approach precisely aims to

overcome speculative arguments and pursue the establishment of statements with a higher

degree of veracity. By interrogating matter, memory, images and sound and interlacing those,

the forensic aesthetics methods unite testimony and evidence, affirming each other’s

statements. The exposition of the modelling process and reflections on the discordant

testimonies make the filmmaking process transparent and add to the believability and

trustworthiness of the arguments. Forensic Architecture aims to fight total relativism and seeks

strategies that establish secure statements rather than speculative ones. Further, as we will see

in the next chapter about the news coverage of Saydnaya and the response to it by political

agents like Syria’s president Baschar Al-Assad, the fight against total relativism is an urgent

one.

232 Takahashi, 235. 233 Ibid., 238. 234 Ibid., 236. 235 Stella Bolaki, Illness as Many Narratives: Arts, Medicine and Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,

2016), 206-7.

Scheuermann 62

6.6. Fake news

Most of the news coverage I studied (in English, German and Swedish, as these are the

languages legible to me) is rather informative about the interactive documentary project in

connection to the findings of the report. Critical accounts were found mainly on Russian news

platforms like Russia today or sputniknews.236 The first one points out the vagueness of the

report and the reliability due to estimated numbers.237 The latter is primarily based on the

statements made by former British ambassador Peter Ford. Ford, who was in Syria from 2003-

2006, became director of the controversial British Syrian Society in 2016. The British Syrian

Society was founded by Fawaz Akhras, the London-based father-in-law of Syria's president

Baschar Al-Assad.238 Ford had already been accused of being a supporter of the Syrian dictator,

and had commented critically on the volunteer organization White Helmets, officially known

as Syria Civil Defence, for being a tool of Western-backed propaganda.239 The main activities

of the White Helmets are urban search and rescue missions in response to bombings and

evacuation of civilians from areas of danger. Ford questions the impartiality of the report and

criticises that some of the witnesses remained anonymous. Claiming that he himself has seen

the prison in Saydnaya (although he has not been inside) while none of the researchers have,

Ford aims to establish that several of the numbers about how many people have been kept

imprisoned there cannot be true. Moreover, Ford raised suspicion about the time the report was

released. He argues that “it appears odd” that the report was published in 2017, just after the

liberation by the Syrian army and successful negotiations that might bring Syria closer to a

political solution for the ongoing war.240 What Ford implies here is a political bias of Amnesty

International that would hinder such progress in those negotiations.

236 See also Rusvesna, ‘"Fake News" and Crimes against Humanity: Amnesty International Admits Syrian

'Saydnaya' Report Fabricated Entirely in UK’, accessed May 2, 2019, https://rusvesna.su/news/1486983637. The

Finnish public broadcaster Yle published two different accounts without clearly taking a stance: Yle, ‘Syrien:

Amnestys Rapport Är Helt Falsk’, accessed May 9, 2019, https://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2017/02/08/syrien-

amnestys-rapport-ar-helt-falsk and. Yle, ‘Amnesty: 13 000 Människor Hängdes i Ökänt Fängelse i Syrien’,

accessed May 9, 2019, https://svenska.yle.fi/artikel/2017/02/07/amnesty-13-000-manniskor-hangdes-i-okant-

fangelse-i-syrien. 237 RT Deutschland, ‘Amnesty International Legt Bericht Über Folter in Syrien Vor – Mit Geschätzten Zahlen’,

May 2, 2019, https://deutsch.rt.com/international/46267-amnesty-international-bericht-syrien-gefaengnis-

folter-hinrichtungen-hochrechnung-schaetzung-zeugen/. 238 Telegraph, ‘Former UK Ambassador Linked to Assad Lobby Group’, accessed May 2, 2019,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/22/former-uk-ambassador-linked-to-assad-lobby-group/. 239 Just World Educational, ‘Former British Ambassador Peter Ford on White Helmets, Golan, Yarmouk, and

More’, accessed May 2, 2019, https://justworldeducational.org/2018/07/former-british-ambassador-peter-ford-

on-white-helmets-golan-yarmouk-and-more/. 240 Sputniknews, ‘Fake News? Amnesty International Report on Torture in Syria Full of Holes’, accessed May 2,

2019, https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201702151050717823-amnesty-international-report-questionable/.

Scheuermann 63

Similarly, Syria’s ministry of justice rejected the allegations made by Amnesty

International.241 Syria’s president Assad himself commented on the Amnesty Report Human

Slaughterhouse, in the first interview he gave to US media after Donald Trump was elected

president of the United States. Yahoo! News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff

talked to Assad in Damascus about the current state of the crises in Syria and about possible

diplomatic relations between Syria and the US government.242 Isikoff confronted Assad with

the findings of Amnesty International concerning mass hangings and the extra-juridical

prosecutions of thousands of Syrians between September 2011 and December 2015. Assad

answered that the report was “biased and politicised”, “without a shred of evidence” and

therefore, as many others by Amnesty International, would put into question Amnesty’s

credibility. Admitting that he has never been to Saydnaya, Assad still claims that the accusations

reproached to the Syrian government, military and secret service are null and void. I find most

striking Assad’s main reason for claiming the accusations void: the fact that the report is based

on interviews, and the lack of “real evidence” such as documents, turns all claims invalid since

interviews could have been paid for. This denial of witness testimony stretches even further as

he was later confronted with another case, a lawsuit filed by a Syrian woman in Spain, whose

lawyers are in possession of 3,000 pages and over 50,000 photographs of tortured bodies taken

by a former governmental official photographer. Again, Assad refuses any veracity of the photo

and states they can be photoshopped and edited – just as everything can be faked today – he

states.

Amnesty Swiss published a commentary written by campaigner Reto Rufer and media

spokesmen Beat Gerber on their national webpage. Here, they reflect more widely on the

problem of mistrust of media coverage of the conflicts in the Middle East. Confusion and

desperation about the seemingly hopeless situation and the degree of the war horrors all were

factors. Closing; Rufer and Gerber ask their readers to remain defiant to “alternative media”.243

I have chosen these reactions sparked by Saydnaya in order to show that the problem of

trustworthy images and statements are current and urgent, as it entails political consequences,

affecting and threatening lives; most likely ongoing in the case of Saydnaya. As the discussion

of the news coverage above might has indicated already, the consequences on the political level

241 BBC, ‘Syria Rejects Amnesty Report on Hangings at Saydnaya Prison’, accessed April 17, 2019,

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-38911298. 242 Yahoo! News, ‘Exclusive: Yahoo News interview with President Bashar Assad of Syria’ (February 10, 2017),

accessed April 16, 2019, https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-yahoo-news-interview-president-

100000514.html. 243 Amnesty International Switzerland, ‘Kommentar: Syrien: Alles Nur Fake-News?’, accessed April 18, 2019,

https://www.amnesty.ch/de/kontakt/medien/kommentare/2017/syrien-alles-nur-fake-news.

Scheuermann 64

are drastically limited. In February 2017 a report on the website ReliefWeb, a humanitarian

information source on global crises and disasters and a specialized digital service of the UN

Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), publishes an article on

Amnesty’s investigations in Syria and states:

Amnesty International does not have evidence of executions after December 2015. However, detainees are still transferred to Saydnaya, “trials” at the Military Field Court in al-Qaboun have continued, and there is no reason to believe that executions have stopped. Therefore, since December 2015, thousands more people are likely to have been executed.

244

An in-depth discussion of fake news and reliable journalism exceeds the given frame of this

thesis but appears as relevant in the context of the potentials and limitations of animated

documentaries and will hopefully be covered by further research. However, I hope to have

demonstrated throughout this thesis how Saydnaya offers innovative strategies and usages of

animation and animation technology in documentary filmmaking and the creation of

trustworthy statements about the world.

244 Reliefweb, ‘Human Slaughterhouse - Mass Hangings and Extermination at Saydnaya Prison, Syria’, accessed

March 20, 2019, https://reliefweb.int/report/syrian-arab-republic/human-slaughterhouse-mass-hangings-and-

extermination-saydnaya-prison.

Scheuermann 65

7. Conclusions

In this thesis I aimed to analyse the potential of the animated documentary Saydnaya – Inside

a Syrian Torture Prison (2016) to create an impact on social memory. Furthermore, my research

was guided by the question if and in what ways animated documentary has transformed the

formation of social memory and public truths in contemporary Western societies. The spatial

and feminist approach primarily based on the work by Giuliana Bruno, allowed me to shift the

focus from ocularcentrism and the gaze towards space, motion and embodied experiences of

film. I aimed to connect the analysis of the animated documentary to wider social and

technological shifts concerning the conceptualization of social memory and public truths in

contemporary Western societies.

Based on the concept of forensic aesthetics, Forensic Architecture shifts away from the

mere illustrative use of arts and employs aesthetic techniques as investigation resources and

means. These methods stress and intensify sensibility to space, matter, and image within

documentary filmmaking as well as human rights activism. Furthermore, this approach seeks

to develop new modes of articulation of truth claims.

The 3D modelling of the torture prison in Saydnaya based on the (acoustic) memory of

five former detainees exemplifies the operational employment of such an investigative aesthetic

method. The participatory construction process of the animated model helped to elicit memories

and testimonies that haven’t been accessed and verbalised by the witnesses before. The idea of

memories being stored or placed in rooms and recollected through mental walks across those

memory sites is not a new one and the connection between architecture and memory can be

traced back, for example, to the mnemonic device of the memory palace developed by the

Roman philosopher Cicero. This concept of memory points towards the quality of places as

sites of mnemonic palimpsest. In reference to Bruno I have shown the link between architecture,

memories and motion pictures. By means of the architectural promenades through memory

rooms and sites images are collected. In this sense, the process of recollection can be understood

as a way of re-enactment of experiences that activates imagination, emotion and somatic

responses. This understanding stresses the haptic experience of memory (sites) and ties back to

the case of Saydnaya where memories were recollected through virtual memory walks,

activated and performed by the architectural re-modelling of the prison, and eventually were

externalised in form of animated images and witness testimony. The architectural 3D model is

Scheuermann 66

both a representation and an investigative tool; thus, it corresponds to the basic principle of

forensic aesthetics that aims to combine those two.

I have contrasted the concept of montage, that has been heavily discussed in film theory,

with the navigation we encounter as spectators/users of Saydnaya. The sequencing of time and

space are crucial for both, but time and space are mobilized differently in each. In montage we

are moved from image to image, from frame to frame by temporal sequencing of distinct

images. In navigation time is sequenced by the directed movement across space as we move

from image to image. Rather than following a linear, time-progressive track, time is spatialized

in navigation. Memories are integrated on site in film as well as in interactive virtual spaces.

However, interactive virtual spaces such as found in Saydnaya demand that we act according

to them in order to proceed in the architecture of the site. As spectators we move differently

through animated space that we can navigate.

In order to understand these actual, physical movements of filmic spectatorship I have

employed theories on haptics by Deleuze and Marks. The navigation through the virtual space

of Saydnaya can be described as tactile, whereas I have demonstrated the haptic quality of the

virtual space when it comes to the appearance of the Saydnaya website. While navigating

through the model or watching video clips the browser bar and possibly other open tabs are still

visible. The tabs overlap in a way similar to windows on a computer screen and as a

spectator/user I am aware of the various other virtual spaces potentially available to me. I argue

with Anne Friedberg that while the three-dimensional perspectivity of the virtual space of the

prison model allows the illusion of immersion, the materiality of the overlapping tabs, layered

upon each other or stacked, makes the spectator aware of their surfaces and the surface of the

screen itself. The frontality of the screen space, suppression of depth and the overlapping of

layers, all invite a haptic look that rests on surfaces and touch upon materiality.

The constructed character of the animated images is underlined by the self-reflexive

mode of filmmaking as the spectator sees how the 3D model is virtually built, how the images

seen are constructed. Moreover, seeing the involvement of the human hand in the process of

creating the images – either by drawing a sketch or using a mouse – invites a haptic look. The

haptic look is furthermore facilitated by seeing, for example, a 360-degree rotatable and isolated

animated construction of a group cell or patches of the underlying pixel grid in the animated

sequences, as they direct the attention of the spectator to the materiality of the images and the

screen.

Some of the animated sequences within the video clips showing the testimonies of the

former detainees’ attempt to give the viewer an impression of what their perception on a visual

Scheuermann 67

and auditive level might have resembled. The creative imagination of the animator and sound

designer seek to translate the witness’ testimony into images and soundtracks, perceivable and

available to an audience. This usage of animation corresponds to the possibilities of animated

documentary to show subjective perspectives and mental states.

Landsman and Bendor argue that animated documentary fosters a new relationship

between film and spectator due to an intensified embodied experience that in turn is achieved

by aesthetic means such as metaphorical images or by fictionalized accounts on a narrative

level. Such embodied spectator experience is crucial for the political potential of animated

documentary and makes a meaningful contribution to social memory possible. Such embodied

experience can also be found in Saydnaya as I have demonstrated above in my discussions of

the haptic materiality of the images, the interactive navigation and the haptic spectatorial

experience. Thus, I argue that Saydnaya bears the potential to contribute to socially shared

memories of the war in Syria. Furthermore, Saydnaya extends its strategies by its application

of animation and sound technologies as not only representation but as tools of investigation.

Considering the dialogic process of giving testimony as a historical event in its own

right, I noted that independent of its future reception Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison

fulfils a function within social memory, in the sense that it allows testimony to be given by the

former detainees and to be witnessed by its film spectators.

In Saydnaya acoustic memory and sound play a crucial role and I have touched upon

the relationship between ear-witness testimony and eye-witness testimony. Entire substitution

of the latter by the former is not likely, however, sound and acoustic memory gained more

attention in the establishment of evidence and truth claims. Visualization, as the translation

from one material – sound and memory – to another material – the image, is key in order to

make the case in Saydnaya. In turn without sound and acoustic memory no images would have

been possible. Eyal Weizman states that architectural modelling bridges the distinct functions

of evidence and testimony.245 Virtual images (interlaced with testimony) become increasingly

imaginable as valid evidence in a legal case, which in turn indicates shifts in what societies

believe and accept to be of evidentiary value and how such value is created.

Evidence and testimony both lead us to the question of truth claims. For much of film

theory, the indexicality of images or sounds has been the key factor to assess their realistic

value. In reference to Gunning, Lundemo and Metz I challenge this notion and argue that

cinematic images do not require to uphold an indexical relationship to reality in order to create

245 Weizman, Forensic Architecture, 87.

Scheuermann 68

mental impressions of reality. As we move away from indexicality towards movement as the

crucial factor for realism, it becomes possible to include animation in our discussion about

cinematic realism and to consider the kinesthetic, embodied experience of the images by the

spectator. The possibilities to create persuasion are thus not (entirely) dependent on the

indexical value of the images but also shaped by how they are perceived and how a statement

about the world is constructed discursively, formally and rhetorically. We rather trust the film

than believe it is ontologically true.

I have stressed the filtering and shaping function of language and the relativity of the

truth that is formulated through it. Also images have a “grammar”, certain motives that re-

occur, compositional elements that follow certain patterns, etc. that shape the statements

articulated. Truth claims – verbal or visual – are discursive acts shaped and (re)negotiated by

discursive structures, agents, institutions and its (pre)conditions. This in turn does not deny the

existence of a material reality or lead us to total constructivism, but it draws our attention to its

shaping agents and dynamics and the crucial aspect that both evidence and testimony are always

mediated. Again we find that persuasion in documentary film is also achieved by artistic or

expressive means and not entirely dependent on, even if shaped by, its indexical relationship to

reality.

The unsettling of information and the emergence of fake news raise concern about an

increasing belief that it is impossible to make true statements about the world. The forensic

approach deployed in Saydnaya aims to overcome speculative arguments and pursue the

establishment of statements with a higher degree of veracity. By interrogating matter, memory,

images and sound and interlacing those the methods of the forensic aesthetics unite testimony

and evidence, affirming each other’s statements. The exposition of the modelling process and

reflections on the errors or disagreeing testimonies make the filmmaking process transparent

and add to the believability and trust of the arguments made. Forensic Architecture develops

innovative forms of filmmaking and aesthetic investigation methods to fight total relativism

and as a radical intervention in times of uncertain images and fake news.

An in-depth discussion of fake news in relation with animated documentary images

could not be covered by this thesis but offers an interesting entry point for upcoming research.

Not at least because Saydnaya – Inside a Syrian Torture Prison delves into a potential of

animated documentary forms and strategies that have rarely been explored yet. I hope to see

more discussions of the investigative possibilities of aesthetic technologies. Additionally, I

want to encourage further explorations of the concepts of movement, in relation to indexicality,

in film theory as I found this shift of thought extremely useful.

Scheuermann 69

Filmography

Evolution (Max Fleischer, 1925)

Life, Animated (Roger Ross Williams, 2016)

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https://saydnaya.amnesty.org/.

S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (S-21: la machine de mort Khmère rouge, Rithy Panh, 2003)

The Einstein Theory of Relativity (Max Fleischer, 1923)

The Sinking of the Lusitania (Winsor McCay, 1918)

The Poet: Unconcealed Poetry (Pusi tak terkuburka, Garin Nugroho, 2001)

Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)

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Abu Hamdan, Lawrence. Earshot, video and sound installation, 2017. Moderna Museet, Stockholm,

Sweden. Web documentation accessed May 15, 2019. http://lawrenceabuhamdan.com/#/new-

page-1/.

Scheuermann 70

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