Autopsy of a Data Trail | Workshop with Júlia Nueno and Lucia Rebolino

7pm Thursday, June 25, 2026
Talk by Júlia Nueno Guitart and Lucia Rebolino
(public event, free entry)

4pm - 8pm Friday, June 26, 2026
12pm - 8pm Saturday, June 27, 2026
Workshop (with registration)

 

Facts are not natural occurrences; they are carefully assembled. For a long time, this assembly was anchored in the visible—a photograph, a physical map, or a witness account. Today, however, these forms of evidence exist alongside a new, digital architecture of truth. Deep within this black box, states and corporations manufacture the facts that sustain their imaginaries.

This production relies on a spectrum of material that often remains invisible to the eye: satellite traces that redefine landscapes, credit footprints that determine social mobility, metadata that maps our private associations, or algorithmic profiles that track our habits. In turn, this material is processed through hidden rules and massive networks until it hardens into an official narrative.

This workshop invites participants to treat digital systems as physical, architectural territories. By shifting the forensic gaze from physical space to the digital one, we will apply forensic methodologies to map and analyze the forms of violence embedded within computational infrastructures.

Spanning from the practices of Júlia Nueno and Lucia Rebolino, we will examine the digital making of facts through two distinct architectural lenses: first, by using spatial evidence to investigate how AI acts as a material force that physically reshapes territories, and second, by treating software environments and datasets themselves as complex, multi-layered structures that can be navigated and contested. Together, these lenses reveal the digital as a site of material construction.

Ultimately, the workshop moves from theory into a hands-on laboratory. We will introduce a set of counter-forensic methods—including web-scraping, data visualization, and mapping—allowing participants to build 'counter-models' that challenge state-led narratives. Working through real-world cases, from environmental struggles to political violence, we will learn to intervene in the production of truth, opening up the processes to explore how facts are built.

Through these methods, we will trace the journey of information, investigating how facts take form across different formats of visible information (images, interfaces, videos), and how these black boxes can be entered and investigated as sites of architectural construction that leave material traces on the ground. In doing so, the workshop displaces the question from whether truth exists, to how it’s produced, under what conditions, and for whose benefit.

About Júlia Nueno Guitart and Lucia Rebolino
 

Júlia Nueno Guitart is a researcher and engineer. Her work explores the computational systems that organize life and the spaces we inhabit, with the goal of developing new ways of understanding and acting with and through them. She is currently a member of the Forensic Architecture team and is pursuing her PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths (University of London), where she also teaches on the master's program in the same discipline. She is the editor of Genocidios. Una lectura Forense (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2025), and her articles and opinion columns have been published in The Guardian, Der Spiegel, VICENews, Springerin, FabrikZeitung, and VersoBlog.

Lucia Rebolino is an artist, architect, and computational designer weaving science and art into counter-cartography, data, and web-based aesthetics. She is a researcher with Forensic Architecture in London, focusing on environmental justice investigations, and an artist-in-residence at the Nieuwe Instituut for 2026 within the –1 digital culture department. Her work on prediction and climate models has been featured in e-flux and exhibited at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and in the Fall 2026 at Medialab Matadero. Her research-based artistic practice explores technology-driven screen performances, and she has lectured at cultural and academic institutions including MoMA, Columbia University, the Royal College of Art, and ETH Zurich.

Júlia and Lucia are also mentors of the 2026 edition of the Collaborative Prototyping Lab, a short-term residency program run by Medialab Matadero on November 12 - 25, 2026.
Applications open until June 14.

About Estudio de Sistemas (Study of Systems)
 

This is the fourth installment of the 2026 season of Estudio de Sistemas (Study of Systems), a regular program of workshops, talks, and seminars aimed at fostering creative intuition and methodological experimentation around emerging and unstable technologies. It’s part of Medialab’s LAB 5 The Mechanics of Truth thematic program.

Who is this workshop for?
 

This workshop is designed for a transdisciplinary group of investigators, creators, and practitioners and we welcome anyone interested in the topics touched upon in the introduction. No advanced programming knowledge is required, but a hacker’s curiosity is certainly welcome.

Practical Information
 

Free workshop, registration is required
Maximum of 20 participants plus auditors/observers
Language: Spanish and English
All sessions take place in the Aulario room (Nave 17) at Matadero Madrid
Attendance is required for the entire duration of the workshop on both days
Participants are required to bring their own laptop with access to specific software or platform accounts that will be communicated by Rebolino and Nueno 2 weeks before the workshop.

Sign up
 

More information soon

Registration is open until June 25. Participants will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis. In the event that some registered participants do not show up, auditors/observers will be admitted as participants in the same order of registration.