On Methods — Bellingcat and Artistic Research

From December 6, 2024 to January 4, 2025, works by the Artistic Research Class of Hochschule Düsseldorf, University of Applied Sciences / Peter Behrens School of Arts will be shown in the DFI e.V. project space at Eiskellerberg in Düsseldorf. The works deal with the methods of the investigative research collective Bellingcat.

For ten years, the collective Bellingcat has been producing independent analyses of current events, including political ones, based on publicly available information. With its Open Source Investigations (OSI), the globally networked group has uncovered serious crimes, exposed false information and revealed links between organised crime and authoritarian governments.

The practice of the network founded by Elliot Higgins, collecting and analysing information and verifying sources, is similar to the practices of artistic research as practised in the Artistic Research Class organised by Professor Mareike Foecking at Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences. Over the past six months, the members in the class have developed independent multimedia, photographic and installation works that deal with Bellingcat’s original working method.

With his ‘Map of Tools and Collectives’, Felix Obermaier maps the toolbox of Bellingcat and the global OSI community on a steel plate. Thin threads connect the various tools with the collective’s research. The members of the community have their say in the form of projections.

The work ‘Grain Trail’ by Louis Peerlings uses the example of illegal wheat smuggling from occupied eastern Ukraine to point out that ‘each individual case in its evidence can only represent the individual parts of a superordinate system’. It is the sum of the observations that results in a complex, often enchanting and aesthetically powerful picture.

Photography plays a decisive role in this, as Mareike Foecking demonstrates in her work ‘What We Know’. ‘The decisive moment of photography, as formulated by Henri Cartier-Bresson, is transformed into the decisive moment of investigation. Bellingcat’s work manages to let the image speak for itself through a meticulous and systematic visual analysis and show it as evidence.’

The exhibition will be opened on December 6, 2024 at 6 pm. We also invite you to a keynote speech ‘About Bellingcat’ on December 12, 2024 and a talk ‘On Tracking – Critical perspectives on tracking infrastructures’ with Sebastian Randerath, University Bonn, on December 10, 2024, both at 7 pm.

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In cooperation with Hochschule Düsseldorf / Peter Behrens School of Arts / Department of Photography and Bellingcat

With kind support by:
Kulturamt der Landeshauptstadt Düsseldorf