Triple-Chaser

Triple-Chaser was made in response to an invitation to the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Forensic Architecture asked Praxis Films to collaborate on the project. It was made independently and without request, oversight, or influence by the Whitney Museum. It was our response to the controversy then surrounding Warren B. Kanders.

When US border agents fired tear gas grenades at civilians in November 2018, photographs showed that many of those grenades were manufactured by the Safariland Group, one of the world’s major manufacturers of so-called ‘less-lethal munitions’. The Safariland Group is owned by Warren B. Kanders, the vice chair of the board of trustees of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Whereas the export of military equipment from the US is a matter of public record, the sale and export of tear gas is not. As a result, it is only when images of tear gas canisters appear online that monitoring organizations and the public can know where they have been sold, and who is using them.

But this kind of manual research is laborious, and time-consuming. Automating any part of that process could be hugely beneficial to human rights monitors, and the pursuit of corporate accountability in the global arms trade.