Since 2022, Forensis and Forensic Architecture (FA) have been working with Nama and Ovaherero leaders in Namibia to investigate sites associated with the genocide perpetrated by the German colonial army against the Ovaherero and Nama between 1904 and 1908. This investigation looks at one of the most traumatic chapters in this history: the legacy of Shark Island, the site of the deadliest concentration camp established by the Germans in the colony then known as 'German South West Africa'. Together with descendants of the victims and survivors, FA/Forensis have reconstructed the camp in unprecedented detail and identified burial sites from the time of the genocide.

The descendants' demands for the preservation of Shark Island and the remembrance of the atrocities committed there have taken on new urgency. Significant proposals for commercial and infrastructural development on Shark Island and in the wider tribal areas of the !Aman Nama threaten to destroy further physical traces of this history - and continue a process of erasure already exacerbated by decades of systematic neglect.

Forensic Architecture(FA) and Forensis use spatial analysis and digital modeling techniques to investigate state and corporate violence, environmental degradation and colonial legacies. In collaboration with the indigenous Ovaherero and Nama groups, the two agencies have conducted a multi-year investigation into the genocide perpetrated by German colonial forces in Namibia in the early years of the 20th century. Their ongoing research, which links this violent history to current cases of state violence in Germany and Palestine, will be presented in a series of films, an installation and a panel discussion.