Reconstruction of the Mariupol Theater: Finding the Soul of the House

A makeshift hospital was housed in one of the cloakrooms, the props served as a pantry, the ticket booth as a food counter. And everywhere in the house, from the basement to the foyers to the hall, people had set up their sleeping places. Behind the lowered Iron Curtain stood a piano, which anyone could play. And there was even a makeshift nursery upstairs.

For a while, the drama theater in Mariupol was like its own city, around a thousand citizens found refuge here from the Russian war of aggression. Until March 16, 2022, a missile hit the building, killing hundreds of them. Although the word “Children” had been painted on the forecourt in large Cyrillic letters.

Shot through story

A war crime, a case for the courts. But Eyal Weizman and Maksym Rokmaniko also deal with the history of the “Academic Drama Theater of the Donetsk Oblast” and its destruction in an air raid. Weizman is the founder of the London-based research agency Forensic Architecture and its Berlin-based subsidiary Forensis. Rokmaniko works for the Center for Spatial Technologies, which shares office space with Forensis.

Together they evaluated thousands of photos, videos and social media posts – in order to be able to develop a model of the theater on the computer that was as true to the original as possible. This is the working principle of the architectural forensic scientists: Using 3D graphics and virtual environments, they reconstruct the scenes of human rights violations – and at the same time locate them in a larger context. “Each projectile,” says Weizman, “pierces through layers of history.”

Reconstruction of a ruin

The researchers from Forensic Architecture in particular repeatedly present their research on genocides, police violence, environmental crimes or the murders of the so-called NSU in the context of art and theater festivals. Weizman and Rokmaniko’s project will be given a stage at Performing Exiles in June, the festival that Matthias Lilienthal is curating for the first time for the Berliner Festspiele.

However, the two of them have already presented a working status as part of a pre-event in the Gropius Bau cinema. The first part of their film “A City within a Building” was shown, which illuminates the drama theater in Mariupol from all sides and leads into the computer model of the house (the ruins of which the Russians finally had demolished at the end of 2022, having previously received a high fence around it) – and who also lets witnesses of the event have their say.

topography of memory

Weizman and Rokmaniko spoke to about 60 airstrike survivors, sometimes in five-hour sessions, to reconstruct what they call a “spatial archive.” A model of history and stories. Working with memory – the two talk about this in an accompanying, highly exciting lecture – is complex. Especially when the traumatized are supposed to sift through their memories.

For this reason, forensic architecture, forensis and also the Center for Spatial Technologies never directly confront the people they interview with the horrors they have experienced. Instead, they let them design topographies with the greatest possible objectivity.

A torture victim is asked, for example, to describe the arrangement of the cells and the location of the corridors as precisely as possible – and then starts talking about the actual violence without the risk of re-traumatization. The procedure was similar in the case of the Mariupol survivors. Although many, as Weizman and Rokmaniko report, were most willing to share their memories. This crime should be solved down to the last detail.

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