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Christina Varvia

Staff details

Christina Varvia

Position

Lecturer in Forensic Architecture, Centre for Research Architecture

Department

Visual Cultures

Email

c.varvia (@gold.ac.uk)

Christina uses forensic architecture techniques and feminist epistemologies to investigate political conditions.

Christina is an architectural researcher and Lecturer at the Centre for Research Architecture, where she teaches the Forensic Architecture studio. Christina focuses on spatial and multi-media investigative techniques, with a particular focus on modelling and time-based media. She guides students through the production of ambitious investigations that have a direct impact on live political conditions, and the deployment of research on multiple fora (courts, activist spaces, parliamentary inquiries, truth commissions, media publications, and exhibitions). Her own research is on biopolitics and feminist conceptions of the human body as coextensive with their environments. She writes on expanded bodies as material fields of political practice. She reflects on image-making practices and images that capture violence. Her work with Forensic Architecture and Forensis –on airstrikes, detention, right-wing, police, and border violence– has won multiple awards and been exhibited internationally.

Research interests

Research areas: Forensic architecture, spatial politics, visual cultures, media studies, aesthetics, human rights, environmental justice, environmental humanities, decolonial theory, border studies, practice-led research.

Featured publications

2022: Forensic Architecture, Witnesses
Edited together with Mette Marie Kallehauge, Lærke Rydal Jørgensen, Kjeld Kjeldsen, Eyal Weizman ISBN: 978-87-93659-55-1 Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2022

2022: Notes on the Politics of an Expanded Body
PARSE JOURNAL ISSN 2002-0953 Violence Issue 15, 2022

2021: The Space of the Body: A working definition
AA FILES, BEDFORD PRESS ISSN: 0261-6823 ISBN: 978-1-9996277-4-4 Issue 78, 2021

2021: Image Sections: The evidentiary capacity of images to sample the lifeworld and have an operative life
THE NORDIC JOURNAL OF AESTHETICS The Changing Ontology of the Image ISSN 2000-1452 Vol. 30 No. 61-62, 2021

Publications and research outputs

Book Section

Varvia, Christina. 2022. Habeas Corpus Expert Witness! In: Mette Marie Kallehauge; Lærke Rydal Jørgensen; Kjeld Kjeldsen; Eyal Weizman and Christina Varvia, eds. Forensic Architecture - Witnesses. Humlebæk, Denmark: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, pp. 68-85. ISBN 9788793659551

Article

Varvia, Christina. 2022. Notes on the Politics of an Expanded Body. Parse Journal, 15, ISSN 2002-0511

Varvia, Christina and Alzakout, Amel. 2021. Image-Sections: The Evidentiary Capacity of Images to Sample the Lifeworld and Have an Operative Life. The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, 30(61-62), pp. 206-229. ISSN 2000-1452

Varvia, Christina. 2021. The Space of the Body: A working definition. AA Files, 78, pp. 24-32. ISSN 0261-6823

Conference or Workshop Item

Varvia, Christina. 2023. 'Itinerant Witnesses Conference'. In: Itinerant Witnesses Conference. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark 28 January 2023.

Weizman, Eyal; Varvia, Christina; Krämer, Elisabeth; Andritsou, Dimitra; Franke, Anselm and Kaleck, Wolfgang. 2021. 'Socializing Evidence'. In: Socializing Evidence. Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, Germany 9 October 2021.

Exhibition Catalogue

Kallehauge, Mette Marie; Jørgensen, Lærke Rydal; Kjeldsen, Kjeld; Weizman, Eyal and Varvia, Christina. 2022. Forensic Architecture - Witnesses.

Film/Video

Varvia, Christina; Levidis, Stefanos; Andritsou, Dimitra; San, Kishan; Abuzaid, Nour; Conte, Lola; Nankivell, Sarah; Trafford, Robert and Weizman, Eyal. 2020. The Killing of Muhammad Gulzar.

Show/Exhibition

Kjeld, Kjeldsen; Kallehauge, Mette Marie and Varvia, Christina. 2022. Forensic Architecture - Witnesses. In: "Forensic Architecture - Witnesses", Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, 20 May - 22 October 2022.

Weizman, Eyal; Varvia, Christina; Krämer, Elisabeth; Andritsou, Dimitra; Franke, Anselm and Kaleck, Wolfgang. 2021. Investigative Commons. In: "Investigative Commons Exhibition", Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin, Germany, 28 May - 8 August 2021.

Weizman, Eyal; Nankivell, Sarah; Varvia, Christina; Saraj, Sarah and Moafi, Samaneh. 2020. Forensic Architecture: True to scale. In: "Forensic Architecture: True to scale", Miami Dade College Museum of Art and Design (MOAD), United States, 20 February - 27 September 2020.

Conferences and talks

2023: Itinerant Witnesses
Curated day-long conference at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.