ON METHODS

In the organizer's words:

Exhibition opening ON METHODS on 6.12. at 6 pm

From 6.12.2024 to 4.1.2025, the DFI e.V. project office on Eiskellerberg in Düsseldorf will be showing artistic works by the Artistic Research Class of the Design Department of the Peter Behrens School of Arts at Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, which deal with the methods of the investigative research collective Bellingcat.

For ten years, the Bellingcat collective has been producing independent analyses of current events, including political ones, based on publicly available information. With its Open Source Investigations (OSI), the globally networked group has uncovered serious crimes, exposed misinformation and revealed links between organized crime and authoritarian governments.

The practice of the network founded by Elliot Higgins, collecting and analyzing information and verifying sources, is comparable to the practices of artistic research as practiced in the Artistic Research Class initiated by Professor Mareike Foecking in the Department of Design at Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences. Over the past six months, the class participants have developed independent multimedia, photographic and installation works that deal with Bellingcat's original working method.

With his "Map of Tools and Collectives", Felix Obermaier maps the toolbox of the collective and the global OSI community on a steel plate. Thin threads connect the various tools with the collective's research. The members of the community have their say in the form of projections.

The work "Grain Trail" by Louis Peerlings uses the example of illegal wheat smuggling from occupied eastern Ukraine to point out that "each individual case in its evidence can only represent the individual parts of a superordinate system". It is the sum of the observations that results in a complex, often enchanting and aesthetically powerful picture.

Photography plays a decisive role in this, as Professor Mareike Foecking demonstrates in her work "What We Know". "The decisive moment of photography, as formulated by Henri Cartier-Bresson, is transformed into the decisive moment of investigation. Through careful and systematic visual analysis, Bellingcat's work manages to let the images speak for themselves and present them as evidence."

The exhibition will be officially opened on 6.12.2024 at 6 pm. We also invite you to a keynote "On Bellingcat" on 12.12.2024 and a lecture "On Tracking - Critical Perspectives on Tracking Infrastructures" with Sebastian Randerath, University of Bonn, on 10.12.2024, both at 7 pm in the exhibition.

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Opening:

- Friday, December 6, 6-8 p.m.

Lecture and keynote:

- Lecture "On Tracking - Critical Perspectives on Tracking Infrastructures" by Sebastian Randerath, University of Bonn: Tuesday, December 10, 7 p.m.

- Keynote "On Bellingcat": Thursday, December 12, 7 p.m.

Opening hours:

- Every Saturday during the exhibition period from 1-6 p.m.

Location:

- Project office DFI e.V., Eiskellerberg 1-3, 40213 Düsseldorf

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