MENGELE’S SKULL

The Advent of Forensic Aesthetics

Thomas Keenan and Eyal Weizman

In the aftermath of World War II, two notorious Nazi villains were exposed in different ways. Adolf Eichmann was tried in Jerusalem in 1960, beginning the “era of the witness” in the prosecution of human rights abuses. Josef Mengele escaped Germany and lived out his life hidden in Argentina. After Mengele’s death in 1985, his body was identified on an examining table in a morgue by a group of forensic scientists in Brazil. This book, based on a presentation by the authors, explores the emergence of the object in human rights, the conditions of its presentation, and the aesthetic operations involved in deciphering the “speech of things.”

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MARKUS MIESSEN

The Nightmare of Participation
(Crossbench Praxis as a Mode of Criticality)

Now available in paperback, Markus Miessen tackles the pervasive contemporary overuse of the concept of “participation” in the final part of his paradigm-changing trilogy. Supported by a nostalgic veneer of worthiness, phony solidarity and political correctness, participation has become the default of politicians withdrawing from responsibility. Miessen argues for an urgent inversion of participation, reflecting cogently on the limits and traps of its real motivations. He dreads breeding the next generation of facilitators and mediators, insisting on conflict as an enabling, instead of disabling, force. With refreshing candor, this internationally known architect and professor outlines a format for acting as uninvited irritant, forcing entry into fields of knowledge that arguably benefit from exterior thinking.

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