I. The Murder of Pavlos Fyssas
[2018]
Forensic Architecture
Project Team: Eyal Weizman, Christina Varvia, Stefanos Levidis, Simone Rowat With:
Sarah Nankivell, Nicholas Masterton, Stefan Laxness, Sofia Georgovassili, Dorette Panagiotopoulou, Fivos Avgerinos Thanks to:
Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Shakeeb Abu Hamdan
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PUBLICATION DATE: 21.09.2018
On the night of September 17, 2013, the young Greek rapper Pavlos Fyssas was attacked and murdered by members of Golden Dawn in his home neighborhood Keratsini, in Athens. The witness accounts of the event claim police were present at the site, observing the crime as it occurred, yet failed to prevent it. The murder marked the culmination of Golden Dawn’s criminal activity who, to this day, have been operating as a paramilitary organisation while holding seats in the Greek parliament. Golden Dawn holds a long record of brutally attacking migrants and political opponents since their formation in the late ’80s. Although some individual crimes have been prosecuted in the past, it took the murder of a Greek citizen to instigate a full investigation on Golden Dawn as a criminal organisation rather than its individual members. Even in the current trial, the entanglement of the police with the organization remains largely unchecked. Against this background, Forensic Architecture has undertaken the task to analyze the court documents, CCTV footage, and police and ambulance radio transmissions of the night, in order to reconstruct a comprehensive account of the event. The resulting video investigation (exhibited) provides a media-aided overview of the event that goes beyond the understanding that any individual present at the scene had access to. The video investigation and supporting report were presented to the Athens Court of Appeals by the lawyers of the Fyssas family on September 10-11, 2018. The investigation has been commissioned by the family of Pavlos Fyssas and co-produced by BAK.
Above and following pages: Footage from multiple CCTV cameras in vicinity of the scene of the murder were synchronized, and the movement of people and vehicles between frames was plotted within a 3D model. Shown here are stills from the video produced by Forensic Architecture, which synthesized the findings of their investigation.
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II. The Killing of Zak Kostopoulos: Ongoing Investigation
[2019]
Forensic Architecture
Project Team: Eyal Weizman, Christina Varvia, Stefanos Levidis, Nicholas Zembashi With:
Sarah Nankivell, Robert Trafford, Lachlan Kermode, Tom Lock
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PUBLICATION DATE: 09.04.2019
On Friday, September 21, 2018, a young LGBTQ activist, Zak Kostopoulos, was brutally beaten to death in broad daylight on a busy pedestrian street near Omonia square, central Athens. Dozens of people passing by paused to observe a group of men violently attacking Zak who, for reasons still unknown, found himself trapped inside a jewelry shop, owned by one of the attackers. When the police were called to the scene, the already heavily-injured Zak was violently apprehended and beaten for a second time as all nine officers pinned him to the ground in their attempt to handcuff him. Zak arrived at the hospital handcuffed and dead. Even after Zak’s death, the police made few efforts to investigate. They did not collect enough testimony or footage from the mobile phones and CCTV cameras present on the scene. The assailants were not immediately arrested, and the crime scene was left unsealed, allowing the jewelry shop owner to clean-up after the incident. Media organizations, clearly withholding more footage than authorities themselves have, spun divisive narratives in an already volatile political context. Given the police’s reluctance to investigate itself, civil society initiatives (such as #JusticeforZakZackie) independently seek accountability. Within this frame, Forensic Architecture was asked by Zak’s family, and their legal representatives to counter-investigate the murder. Forensic Architecture makes a series of strategic prompts to challenge the official state investigation; and to seek to establish whether Zak’s gender identity was part of the reason for the assault, and whether the policemen at the scene were complicit in his death.
Above and following pages: A section of the timeline that synthesizes the findings of Forensic Architecture’s investigation into the case of Zak Kostopoulos, which was shown alongside a video in the exhibition.
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