The material witness — an entity (object or unit) whose physical properties or technical configuration records evidence of passing events to which it can bear witness. Whether these events register as a by-product of an unintentional encounter or as an expression of direct action, history and by extension politics is registered at these junctures of ontological intensity. Moreover, in disclosing these encoded events, the material witness makes ‘evident’ the very conditions and practices that convert such eventful materials into matters of evidence.

SUSAN SCHUP­PLI is a Cana­dian artist, researcher and audio-inves­ti­ga­tor cur­rently asso­ci­ated with the London-based research agency Foren­sic Archi­tec­ture. Over the last twenty years, Schup­pli has returned again and again to the theme of eaves­drop­ping, with a par­tic­u­lar con­cern for the mate­r­ial his­tory and pol­i­tics of audio-tape and the tele­phone.