Countering forensic violence: Philip Scheffner’s Revision

Philip Scheffner's film Revision (2012) is of particular interest to us for the space it creates and the methods it innovates to do counterforensics otherwise. Following Nicole Wolf, we understand Revision as constituting a “cinematic tribunal,” a space for testimony and evidence that does not merely attempt to compete with, supplement or indict the official legal process, but creates its own forum for collective judgment, as well as its own methods and instruments for sense-making.. We suggest that rather than sufficing with a notion of counterforensics as appropriating the weapon of forensics to turn it back on its wielder, Scheffner’s methods in this film allows us to think of counterforensics as methods and instruments of collective sense-making that counter and attempt to undo the violence of traditional forensic practices and methods, subverting the form from within.