A Conversation on Personhood: Animals, Law and Performance

 

This interdisciplinary round-table conversation will question the status of animals in law and critique contemporary understandings of legal personhood.

All welcome. This is a free event, though registration is required.

The Centre for Law and Social Justice are delighted to host artist-in-residence Jack Tan. During his stay we will be hosting a roundtable on animals and personhood to facilitate dialogue across disciplines.

The conversation will feed into Jack’s upcoming performance and art instillation commissioned by the Compass Festival Leedswhere he will revive the medieval animal trials. Jack will appropriate Leeds Town Hall as the site of a fictional Department of Animal Justice, a branch of the Ministry of Justice. Town Hall users will encounter what appears to be a working Animal Court evidenced by signage, information leaflets, posters, court heritage displays, an animal court website, etc. This will culminate in a day of live hearings of ‘naughty animals’ belonging to and nominated by local animal charities, farms and breeders. The accused animals will be prosecuted and defended by barristers, and before a Judge or Recorder according to specially adapted.

Location Details

Charles Thackrah SR 5 (1.05)
University of Leeds

Please use postcode LS6 1AN for sat navs.

All welcome. This is a free event, though registration is required.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-conversation-on-personhood-animals-law-and-performance-tickets-44842400828

Performance: LAW IN THE LIMELIGHT

Performance: LAW IN THE LIMELIGHT

Various artists, activists and lawyers

Arrive 7.30pm prompt for bag checks

Saturday 6 January 2018

Arebyte, 7 Botanic Square, London City Island, E14 0LG

 

Replicating the procedures of courtroom participation, LAW IN THE LIMELIGHT is a new collaborative performance considering the performativity of justice. Since September 2017, artists, activists and lawyers have been meeting monthly in Richard Wentworth’s CONCERTINA installation at Arebyte to explore the relationship between performance and law in discussion workshops facilitated by Jack Tan, as part of Live Art Development Agency – LADA‘s artist-led education programme DIY17. This performance of LAW IN THE LIMELIGHT draws out some of the salient points from the workshops with a particular focus on authenticity, judgment and objecthood in court with the aim of providing insight into the aesthetic dimensions of law and power.

 

Image: Chloe Cooper, collaged from her illustrations and architectural drawings by Apparata.

Art, Law and Pedagogy

Crime and Punishment

Friday 17 November, 7pm – 9pm, LADA, The Garrett Centre, 117a Mansford Street, London, E2 6LX

A conversation between the artist Jack Tan and LADA’s Alex Eisenberg on Jack’s approach to ‘legal aesthetics’, and projects such as Four Legs Good (a revival of medieval animal trials) and Karaoke Court (a legally-binding karaoke dispute resolution process).

Part of Extravagant Bodies, an international festival curated by Kontejner, Croatia, examining the socially determined borders between the normal and the pathological, be they concerned with corporeality, appearance, behavior, sexuality or lifestyle.

The fourth festival, Crime and Punishment (2016-17), looks at the social, legislative, scientific and ideological constructions of criminality and social norms that delineate criminal from non-criminal behavior and has involved programmes in Zagreb, Croatia and Belgrade, Serbia in November 2016, in partnership with KIOSK, Belgrade.

(image: MDSC, rules for fools, image Chris Graham)

 

 

Law in the Limelight – DIY14

DIY 14 is an opportunity for artists working in Live Art to take part in unusual training and professional development projects conceived and run by artists for artists. My DIY project LAW IN THE LIMELIGHT is a set of monthly discussion workshops exploring the relationship between performance and law. Find out more: http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/opportunities/diy-14-2017-jack-tan

---

“The diverse workshop exercises placed me out of my comfort zone and was just what I was looking for to challenge myself in to new ways of thinking and making.” – Participant in Eloise Fornieles’ You’re An Animal!, DIY 13.

“It was like an ideal version of what I imagined it was going to be. As though if someone told you a storybook version of it, then that would be it.” – Participant in James Stenhouse’s Survival Skills for Artists, DIY 13.

25 DIY projects and 3 DIY+ projects for both emergent and experienced practitioners will take place across the UK between July and November. Together, these opportunities represent a huge variety of subjects and approaches from across Live Art including (but not limited to) audaciousness, sensory perception, the penetrated male, embodied Islam, neurodiversity, ecocentric performance-making, displacement, sadomasochism, sound and blackness, the queering of sport, definitions of diversity, underwater living, sex, grief, ageing, and a pilgrimage in the footsteps of Dracula.

More about DIY14 and the other 27 projects: http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/opportunities/diy-14-2017-call-for-participants