Truth will not take Care of itself 
A series of investigations, facts and oral histories

Forensic Architecture / Forensis
Part 3 : The refugee crisis in the Aegean, Borders, data and surveillance

New investigation and a public program
May 9th - June 10th 2023

Can the art institution become a care-taker of truth? Continuing our work through the research platform The Bureau of Care, that examined the ethics and politics of care and how they can inform cultural practice, State of Concept is looking into the way two crises unfolding in tandem these last years are presented in the mainstream: the climate and what became known as the refugee crisis. We will be investigating how they are both affected by new technologies of surveillance, developed within and outside of Europe, especially in developing economies like Greece. Particularly during this last decade, where we observe that data, information and manipulation play a substantial part in major political changes and interventions.

Part 3

State of Concept since 2021, invites curators, artists and cultural collectives to curate a program: this year we are honored to be working for the second time with Forensic Architecture (FA) and its Berlin-based sister agency Forensis. Forensic Architecture / Forensis presents an investigation into 'drift-backs' in the Aegean Sea, followed by a public programme.   which will be at State of Concept from the 9th of May to the 10th of June 2023.

The new research follows a public project highlighting the relationship between technology, surveillance, data and the refugee crisis through the research of prominent journalists and researchers.

Drift-backs in the Aegean Sea

Since early 2020, migrants and refugees crossing the Aegean Sea into Greece describe being intercepted within Greek territorial waters, or arrested after they arrive on Greek shores, beaten, stripped of their possessions, and then forcefully loaded onto life rafts with no engine and left to drift back to the Turkish coast. 'Drift-backs', as this illegal practice of abandoning asylum seekers at sea has come to be called by some, have become routine occurrences throughout the Aegean, often resulting in injuries and drownings. Here, natural processes and geographical features of the Aegean archipelago - currents, waves, winds and uninhabited rocks – are mobilized by the Hellenic Coast Guard to carry out the expulsion, distancing the perpetrators from the impact of their lethal actions, and shielding them from accountability. To this day the Greek authorities deny that 'drift-backs' take place in the Aegean.

The research presented here, however, shows that this is not a plausible deniability - rather, what emerges is a systematic, calculated practice. Spanning a period of two years, from March 2020, when the first drift-back case was reported and documented, to March 2022, our interactive cartographic platform hosts evidence of over 1000 such cases. Evidencing the systematic and widespread nature of the practice and demonstrating relations between incidents, localities, and actors, the platform is already supporting ongoing legal action in local and European courts, independent monitoring, reporting, and advocacy, as well as growing demands for accountability and international calls for the defunding of national border guards and FRONTEX.

The third and final part, presents Forensic Architecture / Forensis' research on the "drift-backs" in the Aegean Sea and is accompanied by a public program that frames the research, highlighting the role of technology in the continuation of the political violence promoted by the European Union, and how this role is played out in Greece through the surveillance scandal.

Public Program

Tuesday, 9th of May, 18:30
The data frontier. Investigating mass surveillance in the EU, a talk with Apostolis Fotiadis, Luděk Stavinoha & Giacomo Zandonini. Moderation: Stefanos Levidis and iLiana Fokianaki. 
The talk will be conducted in English. 

Tuesday, 16th of May, 18:30
Borders, Surveillance and the refugee crisis, a talk with Stefanos Levidis, Stavros Malichoudis & Eliza Triantafyllou and a contribution by Algorithm Watch Berlin. Moderation: Danai Maragoudaki. 
The talk will be conducted in Greek. 

To reserve your place or for more info please email us at:  info@stateofconcept.org