MoMA R&D

Salon 43 Traces

Traces considers the markings, echoes, or remnants that record the fleeting existence of an event, thing, or person. In most cases, the traces we value are those that can be verified and validated, and thereby formally documented within established systems of legitimization. With recent advances in artificial intelligence especially, what was previously considered to be evidence can no longer evade our rightful caution and suspicion. A photograph, for example, cannot automatically be assumed to be a factual and objective documentation of a live event—and now neither can a voice recording, video, or signature. Under this crisis of truth, we must reevaluate and reconsider what traces we can trust and what knowledge we can depend on.

Some of the questions we will ask: What can previously overlooked traces tell us about past people, places, things, and events? What new forms of knowledge can be produced by paying attention to those traces that we previously looked past? How must we rethink the representation we trust to hold truth in the current age of falsification? What new literacies must we develop to become more attuned to the latent yet unseen traces around us? Does every object, event, or person leave a trace? How can we learn to see the unseen? Can knowledge about the traces left behind be more impactful than knowledge about the thing itself? How can we become more aware of the traces we leave behind, whether they are social, emotional, environmental, ecological, etc?

This Salon took place on September 19, 2023

Speakers

Video Contributors

Reading Resources

  • UNDERSTANDING TRACES

  • Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” 1942. (Available online)

  • Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Trans. N.M. Paul and W.S. Palmer. New York: Zone Books, 1988.

  • Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1967.

  • Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967.

  • Routledge, Bruce. “An Archaeology of Traces.” Cambridge Archaeological Journal (September 13, 2023): 1-14. (Available online)

  • Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. “Jacques Derrida.” (Available online)

  • ON INVESTIGATING TRACES

  • Blythe, Finn. “Overlapping Lines: Lawrence Abu Hamdan Interviewed by Finn Blythe.” BOMB Magazine. February 13, 2023. (Available online)

  • Burney, Ian. “Our Environment in Miniature: Dust and the Early Twentieth-Century Forensic Imagination.” Representations 121, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 31-59. (Available online)

  • Conan Doyle, Arthur. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. London: George Newnes, 1892.

  • “Exchange Principle.” ScienceDirect. 2017. (Available online)

  • Gershon, Livia. “The Mystery of Crime-Scene Dust.” Jstor Daily. June 27, 2023. (Available online)

  • Murphy, Kate. “Contact Tracing Is Harder Than It Sounds.” The New York Times. May 23, 2020. (Available online)

  • Shuster, Simon. “The World’s Most Famous Private Detective Makes No Apologies.” Time Magazine, September 10, 2021. (Available online)

  • Valk, Diana. “How Forensic Techniques Aid Archaeology.” Jstor Daily. May 6, 2015. (Available online)

  • ON TRACING HISTORY THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY

  • Arsic, Branka. “Keeping Memory: On Eduardo Cadava’s ‘Paper Graveyards.’” Los Angeles Review of Books. April 17, 2022. (Available online)

  • Azoulay, Ariella Aïsha. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London and New York City: Verso Books, 2019.

  • Azoulay, Ariella Aïsha. Different Ways Not to Say Deportation. Vancouver: Fillip Editions, 2013. (Available online)

  • Cadava, Eduardo. Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History. Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1997. (Available online)

  • De Cauwer, Stijn. “Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and Georges Didi-Huberman: the persistence of lost worlds.” Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 13, no. 1 (November 10, 2021). (Available online)

  • Desnoes, Edmundo. “The Death System.” In History. New York: International Center of Photography, 2008.

  • Dia Art Foundation. “Tiffany Sia on An-My Lê.” May 17, 2023. (Available online)

  • Focht, Maiya. “A secret bomb and ruined film: Why the US government only told Kodak it was going to test nuclear bombs.” Insider. July 25, 2023. (Available online)

  • Meiselas, Susan. Learn to See. delpire & co: Paris, 2021.

  • ON UNCOVERING TRACES THROUGH ARCHITECTURE

  • Feng, Rhoda. “Investigative Aesthetics: Eyal Weizman Interviewed by Rhoda Feng.” BOMB Magazine. November 9, 2021. (Available online)

  • Frichot, Hélène. Dirty Theory: Troubling Architecture. Baunach: Art Architecture Design Research, 2019. (Introduction available online)

  • Otero-Pailos, Jorge. “The Ambivalence of Smoke: Pollution and Modern Architectural Historiography.” Grey Room 44, (2011): 90-113. (Available with access)

  • Otero-Pailos, Jorge. The Ethics of Dust. Köln: Walther König, 2009. (Excerpt available online)

  • Weizman, Eyal. Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability. New York: Zone Books, 2017. (Available with access)

  • Weizman, Eyal and Matthew Fuller. Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth. London and New York: Verso Books, 2021.

  • Weizman, Ines. Dust & Data: Traces of the Bauhaus Across 100 Years. Leipzig: Spector Books, 2019. (Lecture on the book available online)

  • Wigley, Mark. “The Excremental Interior.” e-flux Architecture. September 2022. (Available online)

  • Katchadourian, Nina. Dust Gathering: An Audio+ Experience. An audio tour by Nina Katchadourian. New York: Museum of Modern Art, October 21, 2016 through October 1, 2017. (Available online)

  • ON DIGITAL TRACES

  • Amanda Darrach, “How the New York Times verified the Iran missile-strike footage,” Columbia Journalism Review, January 15, 2020. (Available online)

  • Cerf, Vint and Dragan Espenschied. “Preservation by Accident is Not a Plan.” Rhizome. May 30, 2017. (Available online)

  • Idrees Ahmad, “Bellingcat and How Open Source Reinvented Investigative Journalism,” The New York Review of Books, June 10, 2019. (Available online)

  • Knight, Sam. “Adam Curtis Explains It All.” The New Yorker. January 28, 2021. (Available online)

  • Raja Abdulrahim, Patrick Kingsley, Christiaan Triebert and Hiba Yazbek, “The Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh: Tracing a Bullet to an Israeli Convoy,” The New York Times, June 20, 2022. (Available online)

  • National Gallery of Art. “Visibility Machines: A Conversation with Harun Farocki and Trevor Paglen.” November 4, 2014. (Available online)

  • Triebert, Christiaan, Blacki Migliozzi, Alexander Cardia, Muyi Xiao, and David Botti. “Fake Signals and American Insurance: How a Dark Fleet Moves Russian Oil.” The New York Times, May 30, 2023. (Available online)

  • Triebert, Christiaan, Christoph Koettl, and Ainara Tiefenthäler. “How Strava’s Heat Map Uncovers Military Bases.” The New York Times, January 30, 2018. (Available online)

  • Yousur Al-Hlou, Masha Froliak, Dmitriy Khavin, Christoph Koettl, Haley Willis, Alexander Cardia, Natalie Reneau and Malachy Browne, “Caught on Camera, Traced by Phone: The Russian Military Unit That Killed Dozens in Bucha,” The New York Times, December 22, 2022. (Available online)

  • TRACES OF LIFE

  • Hassan, Adeel. “Overlooked – Henrietta Lacks.” The New York Times. March 8, 2018. (Available online)

  • Johnson, Sarah Stewart. The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2020.

  • Johnson, Sarah Stewart. “Why Frigid Mars Is the Perfect Place to Look for Ancient Life.” The New York Times. February 17, 2021. (Available online)

  • Knoll, Andrew H. Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

  • National Institute of Justice. “The Forensic Microbiome: The Invisible Traces We Leave Behind.” June 7, 2021. (Available online)

  • O’Grady, Cathleen. “Cities have their own distinct microbial fingerprints.” Science. May 26, 2021. (Available online)

  • Scholes, Sarah. “The Search for Extraterrestrial Life as We Don’t Know It.” Scientific American. February 1, 2023. (Available online)

  • Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2011.

  • Yehuda, Rachel. “How Parents’ Trauma Leaves Biological Traces in Children.” Scientific American. July 1, 2022. (Available online)

  • ON USING TRACES TO CHALLENGE THE PRODUCTION OF HISTORY

  • Bertischi, Denise, Julien Lafontaine Carboni, and Nitin Bathla. Unearthing Traces: Dismantling Imperialist Entanglements of Archives, Landscapes, and the Built Environment. Lausanne, Switzerland: EPFL Press, 2023. (Available online)

  • Campbell, Crystal Z. “99 Years After the Tulsa Race Massacre, an Artist Reflects.” Hyperallergic. June 1, 2020.

  • Gates Jr., Henry Louis. Finding Your Roots. PBS. Originally released March 25, 2012. (Available online)

  • Gross, Jenny. “What Did Europe Smell Like Centuries Ago? Historians Set Out to Recreate Lost Scents.” The New York Times. November 18, 2020. (Available online)

  • Haigney, Sophie. “What Does History Smell Like?” The New York Times. December 4, 2020. (Available online)

  • Hartman, Saidiya. “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe 12, no. 2 (June 1, 2008): 1-14. (Available online)

  • Mbembe, Achille. “The Power of the Archive and its Limits.” In Refiguring the Archive edited by Carolyn Hamilton, Verne Harris, Jane Taylot, Michele Pickover, Graeme Reid, and Razia Saleh, 19-27. Berlin: Springer Dordrecht, 2002. (Available online)

  • moore, madison. “DARK ROOM. Sleaze and the Queer Archive.” Contemporary Theatre Review 31, no.1-2 (May 19, 2021): 191-196. (Available online)

  • Poll, Zoey. “Turning the Gestures of Everyday Life Into Art.” The New York Times. January 8, 2023. (Available online)

  • ON MATERIAL TRACES IN THE ENVIRONMENT

  • Helmreich, Stefan. A Book of Waves. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.

  • Henni, Samia. “Jerboasite: Naming French Radioactive Matter in the Sahara.” e-flux Architecture, (December 2022). (Available online)

  • Henni, Samia. Deserts Are Not Empty. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. (Introduction available online)

  • Hyde, Timothy. “‘London particular’: the city, its atmosphere and the visibility of its objects.” The Journal of Architecture 21, no. 8 (2016): 1274-1298.

  • Liboiron, Max. Pollution is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.

  • Schuppli, Susan. Material Witness: Media, Forensics, Evidence. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2020.

  • Schuppli, Susan. “Learning from Ice: Notes from the Field.” In Fieldwork for Future Ecologies / Radical Practice for Art and Art-based Research. Eds. Bridget Crone, Sam Nightingale, and Polly Stanton. Eindhoven: Onomatopee 225: 2022. (Available online)