“The wounds of things are deciphered and then subjected to interpretation. Things are made to speak, often subjected to additional violence in the process. The field of forensic medicine can be understood as the torture of objects, from which we expect full disclosure—just as we do from human beings when they are interrogated. Frequently, things must be destroyed, dissolved in acid, cut, or dismantled in order to make them tell their full story. To affirm the thing also means to make it collide with history.”
—Hito Steyerl, The Wretched of the Screen