Shark Island: An Architectural Reconstruction of a Death Camp
<p>Since 2022, Forensis and Forensic Architecture (FA) have worked with Nama and Ovaherero leadership groups in Namibia to examine sites related to the 1904–1908 genocide perpetrated by the German colonial army against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples. This investigation examines 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 known at the time as ‘German South West Africa’. Together with descendants of victims and survivors, we reconstructed the camp in unprecedented detail and identified burial sites dating back to the period of the genocide.</p> <p>Descendants’ calls for the preservation of Shark Island and commemoration of the horrors that took place there have taken on new urgency. Significant proposals for commercial and infrastructural development on Shark Island and throughout the wider ancestral lands of the !Aman Nama threaten to destroy further physical traces of this history, continuing a process of erasure already compounded by decades of systemic neglect.</p>
Authors: Forensis, Forensic Architecture, Eyal Weizman
Editors: Ashkan Cheheltan
Researcher: Agata Nguyen Chuong, Tobechukwu Onwukeme, Christoffer Horlitz, Mark Mushiba
Contributors: Robert Trafford, Elizabeth Breiner, Isabella Parlamis, Robert Mackey, Omar Ferwati, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Alicia Suriel Melchor, Jasper Humpert, Dimitra Andritsou, Evi Chantzi, Miriam Rainer, Joel Schülin, Fine Bieler
Video Editor: Sina Salimi
Forensis, Forensic Architecture