Forensic tales: Embodied peace and violence in Colombian armed (post) armed conflict

In this audio-visual essay, I explore Colombian forensic experts’ embodied knowledge of the armed conflict, specifically about how it is accounted for, and co-produced from and by their work. I relay in storytelling as a narrative technique to attend to forensic experts’ experiences. Through their stories and their voices, I show that due to the magnitude of the armed conflict and the fact that it has spread all over the country, forensic experts have an extensive understanding of both the country’s geography and the dynamics of the violence. This experience produces a particular version of the relationship between the two that is marked and informed by forensic experts’ embodied experience searching for and exhuming victims. However, from their experiences of dealing with the horrors of war, it also become evident practices of reconciliation that occur amidst the protracted violence and that take place through, around, and with forensic practice.
I develop this piece in three steps. First, I pay attention to forensic experts’ experiences and enactments of Colombia as a country marked by violence and how geography and violence have become together. Second, I address the effect their work has on forensic experts’ bodies, which carry the inscriptions of the war in physical and emotional ways. Third, I attend to how forensic experts’ bodies, experiences, stories, and knowledge become sites of hope and reconciliation.
Each of these steps is accompanied by animated illustrations and sounds. The sound is forensic experts’ voices as recorded from interviews I held with them. Additionally, one of them is complemented by other sounds and another one by original music. As such, the animated illustrations are part of the argument and are meant to counterpart the stories in ways that allow for silence and other voices (that are not mine) to be present and co-inhabit. In this sense, not all conclusions and statements are written. Instead, I open up the space to give room for reflection, speculation, and imagination to be part of the experience of this piece. To do so, to be able to attend to forensic experts’ experiences, we (the readers and I) must engage with their stories, listen to them, and take them seriously.