This free screening, ‘Memory Jackets’ draws on three studies of terror forensics to examine how both media and society are steeped in voyeuristic tendencies and narrative bias.

Presented in partnership with Queensland Film Festival and the IMA, see three short films introduced by Dr Suzannah Fay-Ramirez of the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. Fay-Ramirez’s criminology and sociology research is underscored by questions of race and ethnic stratification, and how perceptions of crime influence individual actions.

Memory Jackets: Mixed 64 minutes | 6:30pm | 15+

Watching the Detectives | Chris Kennedy 2017 | 36 minutes
Immediately after the Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013, amateur detectives took to Internet chat rooms to try and find the culprits. Users on Reddit, 4chan and other gathering spots pored over photographs uploaded to the sites, looking for any detail that might point to the guilt of potential suspects. Using texts and jpegs culled from these investigations, Watching the Detectives narrates the process of crowd sourcing culpability.

Courtesy of Chris Kennedy

12 Explosions | Johann Lurf 2008 | 6 minutes
Filmmaker Johann Lurf sets off a series of fireworks in the dark streets of Vienna. Shots of dimly lit footpaths, deserted parking lots, a pedestrian bridge, weigh heavy with anticipation, followed by explosions as our expectations are confirmed one by one. 12 Explosions is a study of perception; of movement, light and sound.

Courtesy of sixpackfilm

Rubber Coated Steel | Lawrence Abu Hamdan 2016 | 22 minutes
Lawrence Abu Hamdan is a forensic audio analyst as well as an artist, and in 2014 he was asked to analyse audio files that recorded the shots that killed Nadeem Nawara and Mohamed Abu Daher in the West Bank of Palestine. His audio investigation, which proved that the boys were shot by real bullets and not rubber ones, became the centre of a murder investigation that went through the military courts and international news networks to the US Congress, where it was used to argue that the Israelis had breached the US-Israeli arms agreement. One year later the artist holds his own tribunal for these serial killing sounds in the form of this video and the following transcript he authored, titled Rubber Coated Steel. Rubber Coated Steel does not preside over the voices of the victims but seeks to amplify their silence, questioning the ways in which rights are being heard today.

Courtesy of Lawrence Abu Hamdan