Clouds are always double. Seen from the outside they are measurable objects, seen from within they are experiential conditions of optical blur and atmospheric obscurity. Today’s clouds are both environmental and political. Their toxic fog is easily surrounded by lethal doubt. When ‘post-truth’ and denialism obscure acts of violence and compound the harm, we, the inhabitants of toxic clouds, must find new ways of resistance.

When US border agents fired tear gas grenades at civilians in November 2018, photographs showed that many of those grenades were manufactured by the Safariland Group, one of the world’s major manufacturers of so-called ‘less-lethal munitions’. The Safariland Group is owned by Warren B. Kanders, the vice chair of the board of trustees of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

On 7 April 2018, the city of Douma, Syria, was targeted by two chemical weapons attacks. At that time, the city and its surrounding areas had been under siege by the Syrian military since 2013. At least 70 people died in the attacks, according to reports. Two distinctive yellow canisters, similar to those previously linked to chlorine gas attacks across Syria, were found following the strikes: one on a rooftop balcony near to Al Shuhada square, and the other in a bedroom at an unknown location in the city. We reconstructed the two sites as 3D models using available images and video material. We also reconstructed the canisters as digital objects and analysed the physical traces inscribed on them. -FA

When police shot and killed Harith Augustus not far from his South Shore barbershop, Chicago police called the incident a legitimate "split-second" decision. We unpack this fraction of a second into six different timescales, from milliseconds to years. Our investigation revealed multiple violations perpetrated by the Chicago police, including, not for the first time, the withholding of critical video evidence from the public.

In late summer of 2014, the Ukrainian Armed Forces battled pro-Russian separatists for control of the town of Ilovaisk, in the border region of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. By September, the separatists had won a resounding victory, routing the retreating Ukrainian army. Even as the battle was ongoing, however, allegations swirled that regular units of the Russian army had joined the battle on the side of the separatists, tipping the balance decisively in their favour. Russia denied the charges. But, in what became a watershed moment for open source investigation, communities of researchers, reporters, and citizen journalists gathered substantial and compelling open source evidence for the presence of the Russian military in the region. This video is a documentary piece that ventures both into the realms of science and politics (it’s part of the body of evidence submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in the form of an interactive platform).