Geothanatology
Toward a forensic poetics of territory
Ian Mont, 2025
A theoretical essay that proposes geothanatology as an interdisciplinary analytical framework for studying the relationship between death, disappearance, and geographical space in contexts of forced migration. Working from an approach that integrates critical geography, necropolitics, forensic studies, and documentary art practices, it examines how territory actively takes part in the production, concealment, and signification of migrant death.
In contrast to projects such as Forensic Oceanography and Forensic Architecture, geothanatology adds an absent dimension: the question of impossible mourning and suspended memory when body and place disappear at once. It develops a methodology in three movements (forensic cartography of the territory, discursive and visual analysis, and a poetics of testimony), and a proposal for co-research with affected communities that refuses academic and artistic extractivism.
The essay articulates the framework from which the artist’s current work is thought, in particular the series 32,790 (and Counting), Golden Standard and Strata of Oblivion.