New MIT Press Book Explores Media Practices for Documenting Violence

MIT Press has published "Exposing Violence: Media Practices and Aesthetics of Radical Truth" by Agnieszka Jelewska and Michał Krawczak, professors at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. The open-access book examines nonhierarchical, experimental media practices that produce knowledge about violence against humans and the environment. It argues that in an era of post-truth politics, truth must be actively reconstructed through transparent, collective verification processes. Case studies include Forensic Architecture and Amnesty International's investigation of the 2014 Rafah bombardment, SITU Research's Euromaidan Event Reconstruction, Public Lab's DIY aerial monitoring of the BP oil spill, Forensic Oceanography's tracing of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, Safecast's citizen radiation monitoring after Fukushima, and the Quipu Project documenting forced sterilizations in Peru. The authors introduce the concept of "aesthetics of radical truth" (AeRT) to describe methods merging digital and material realities. The book highlights how grassroots initiatives like 858: An Archive of Resistance, Syrian Archive, and Alsaha Archive preserve evidence of repression. In 2014, Indonesia's Constitutional Court admitted digital maps by indigenous communities as evidence against extraction corporations.