In recent years a little known research group named Forensic Architecture began using novel research methods to undertake a series of investigations into human rights abuses. Today, providing crucial evidence for international courts and working with a wide range of activist groups, NGOs, Amnesty International and the UN, Forensic Architecture has not only shed new light on human rights violations and state crimes across the globe, but it has also given rise to a new form of investigative practice, which bears its name. The group uses architecture as an optical devise with which to investigate armed conflicts and environmental destruction and to cross-reference multiple other evidence sources such as new media, remote sensing, material investigation, witness testimony and crowd sourcing. This lecture by the group’s founder (and AA graduate) Eyal Weizman, introduces the practice, outlining its origins, history, assumptions, potential and double binds. This lecture will show how public truth is technologically, architecturally and aesthetically produced and how it could be used to confront state propaganda, secrets and expose ever new forms of state violence.