The anatomy of the crime scene. Paper at the 101st Annual Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies conference, Chicago April 2011

1. The anatomy of the crime scene
- on narrative and performative practices in
the investigation of crime’s place and actions
SASS 2011: Panel on crime fiction and contemporary society
Kjetil Sandvik, ph.d. associate professor, Dept. of Media, Cognition and Communication,
University of Copenhagen

2. Point of departure
• a crime scene may be understood as an
augmented place
• places may be augmented through several
narrative strategies for embedding stories into a
certain place and among which are staging,
fictionalization, and physical alteration
• the way we perceive and experience augmented
places is by applying a performative practice
through which simulations of the embedded
narratives are acted out in time and space

3. Augmented places
• Places which has gotten a certain surplus
of meaning, a certain kind of narrative
embedded into it.
• Augmentation of actual places implies that
the characteristics of these places have
been enhanced in that a certain mode,
atmosphere or story has beed added to
them as extra layers of meaning.

4. Augmentation of places
• Augmentation may take place as a
process of staging in which the place
constitutes a scene for the performance
of ‘true’ stories, that is re-enactment of
some actual events which are
recognized as objectively authentic.

5. The staging of the Jack the Ripper-story
runs through and organizes urban space
of today’s London and thus changing it
into a specific place with a specific
atmosphere and a specific plot:
the scene of the crime.

6. Augmentation of places
• Staging
• Augmentation of places may happen
through fictionalization in which the
actual places are working as settings for
fictions, which again influence our
perception of these places.

8. When tourists embark on one of this tours, they are taken on a guided
walk through parts of the actual towns working as ‘scenes of the crime’
in Stieg Larsson’s or Henning Mankel’s novels, but following the trails
laid out not by some historical person or chain of historical events
(like in the case of the Jack the Ripper-tour ) but by fictional characters
(Blomqvist/Salander or Wallander) and their actions and thus the actual
places have become augmented as a result of fictionalization.

9. Augmentation of places
• Staging
• Fictionalization
• Augmentation of place through physical
alteration: a place that has been in a
certain state at a certain moment in time,
i.e. the moment at which the place
constituted the scene for some kind of
physical activity, which has changed its
nature..

10. The crime scene as an
augmented place
• Crime scenes are constituted by a
combination of a plot and a place.
• The place is not just setting for the plot; it
generates the plot in that it has been
embedded with narrative traces which may
be read, (re)enacted and reconstructed.
• Thus the place carries a plot (a narrative),
which at first is hidden and scattered and
has to be revealed and pieced together
through a process of investigation and
exploration with the aid of different forensic
methods, eye-witnesses and so on; -
through reading and interpretation.

17. CSI uses of simulation
• Simulation as narrative strategy is well known in
crime scene investigations in the performing of
reconstructions of how the actual crime may have
happened.
• Using simulation as a narrative and performative
practise implies that the investigators play the roles
of potential murderers, helpers, victims, witnesses in
order to reconstruct the chain of events (the crime)
in time and space.
• In crime fiction tv series (as well as other types of
crime fiction) crime scenes are reconstructed and
interpreted by the investigators through narrative
and performative practises through which a specific
virtual (in the sense of potential or possible) story
space and a specific plot is being simulated.

18. CSI in fiction and real-life
• Differences: real-life CSI lacks the
emotional suspense of the fictional
drama (and then again…)

19. Corporate branding
of Danish Police
CSI-unit using a
dramatized and
emotive presentation-
form
http://www.politi.dk/da/servicemenu/baggrund/KTCoevelse_reportage_21092007.htm

20. CSI in fiction and real-life
• Differences: real-life CSI lacks the
emotional suspense of the fictional
drama (and then again…)
• Similarities: also real-life CSI make use
of narrative and performative strategies
in the reading and (re)construction of the
crime scene

21. • Interpreting the crime scene as an augmented
space as is a crucial part of a crime scene
coordinator’s operations:
• Reading the place is part of the investigation and
creating a mental image of the crime helps the crime
scene coordinator to determine how the
investigation should be conducted and on what it
should be concentrated.
• This practice of investigating a crime’s space and
actions is best described as a narrative practice;
• a systematic – and expertise based – work of
imagination through which simulations of the
potential criminal actions are performed (if not
physically, so mentally) in order to reconstruct the
events which have taken place and – physically,
informational, emotionally – have changed the crime
scene as an actual place into an augmented place.

22. Questions?
Comments?