2017 ~ Sunday February 12 in Arnhem ~ ROAMING ASSEMBLY#11 ~ The Strange Case of the Case ~ curated by Sven Lütticken
You are warmly invited to join us in Arnhem on Sunday, February 12, 2017 for the 11th edition of our Roaming Assembly, during which the theatre Huis Oostpool in Arnhem becomes a meta-court in which artists and art historians discuss and (re)enact legal cases. It is in courts that the world is remade on a case-by-case basis. If, for Cicero, actors merely mimic the real while (legal) orators act the real, this distinction is far from clear-cut. Even while the juridical seeks to regulate art and fully subject the aesthetic to the productive logic of (intellectual property) law, the court case as legal theater can be subject to unscripted interventions by various players.
The Strange Case of the Case
Curated by Sven Lütticken
With:
Zachary Formwalt (in collaboration with DAI students Mira Adoumier, Astarti Athanasiadou, Ulufer Celik, Agata Cieslak, Benedicte Clementsen, Giulia Crispiani, Valentina Curandi, Iva Kovac, Aldo Ramos, Despina Sevasti, Savannah Theis and Wilfred Tomescu)
Program
(please scroll for practicalities)
13:30 Word of welcome by DAI-director Gabriëlle Schleijpen
13:35 Introduction by Sven Lütticken
14:00 Zachary Formwalt; Night of January 16th: A counter-play. Performance with DAI students
"We are turning towards (....) a nineteenth century United States Supreme Court case that would prove foundational in the establishment of corporate personality as it is understood today in the United States. We’re going to stage the filming of the testimony in question as a series of screen tests. There are some prepared answers to some prepared questions. A lawyer should never ask a question to which s/he doesn’t know the answer, as the saying goes. Since we are not lawyers, there will hopefully also be some unprepared questions."
15:00 Break
15:15 Frederic J. Schwartz, “Brecht’s Threepenny Lawsuit and the Culture of the Case.” Lecture.
Brecht was a connoisseur of the legal case. From his essay on the Threepenny Lawsuit to many dramatic scenes of courts or tribunals, he showed a longstanding fascination with legal process. Yet while the Threepenny Lawsuit is a touchstone for critical discussions of modern media, it remains relatively little studied as a reflection on the law and as an intervention into contemporary discussions of it. This paper asks why, and seeks an answer by looking first at legal proceedings as a medium, and second at the media of the law.
16:10 Judy Radul, Body Press to Body Cam: Video in Art and Court. Lecture.
As an artist that works with video Judy Radul has been interested in how the increasing inclusion of video in the courtroom turned the court from a solely theatrical/literary sphere to a videographic one. She wonders about how artists' use of the medium can be critically related to the use of video in the court room. Related questions about the use of video as evidence also arise. How do legal video aesthetics intersect with video art aesthetics? For this talk she will show examples of her work and the work of other artists to anchor these discussions.
17:10 Break
17:25 Agency: Assembly (The Strange Case of the Case), lecture performance
For Assembly (The Strange Case of the Case), Agency calls forth one “thing” from its “list”, speculating on the question: “What if 'objective' things become mutually included within artistic practices?” Copyright protects original and not common “works”. Thing 001029 (Letty Lynton) will convene an assembly at DAI in order to bear witness. It concerns a controversy between the theater makers Edward Sheldon and Margaret Ayer Barnes and the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about the film Letty Lynton. During the 1936 court case Sheldon and Barnes v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer at the Court of Appeal in London Judge Hand had to decide if the film Letty Lynton used the judgment of the Madeleine Smith criminal trial in Scotland in the public domain or the script of the play Dishonored Lady, which was based on that criminal trial, by Sheldon and Barnes.
18:30 Drinks for all.
Practical
*Sunday February 12, 2017 from 13:30 till 18:30 followed by drinks
*Location: Huis Oostpool, Nieuwstraat 58, 6811 HX Arnhem in Arnhem (at 5 minutes walking distance from the DAI's premises in the Kortestraat and 10 minutes from Arnhem's central train station).
*Free admission to all, no reservations needed for the symposium.
*After the event, around 18:30, a communal dinner (prepared by our amazing vegan chef Mari Pitkänen and her team) will be served at Huis Oostpool.
If you wish to join us for this dinner you will need to make a reservation. Please contact n.doulos@artez.nl (closing date February 8). Costs for members of the public: € 10 for food & wine.
About DAI's ROAMING ASSEMBLY
is a recurring public symposium scheduled to take place once a month, functioning as it were as the DAI-week's 'centerfold' event. This state-of-the-art speculative and hybrid program explores specific themes and topics of contemporary relevance to the thinking of art in the world today. It is considered a key part of the DAI's (version of the) Planetary Campus - an affective community where caring for the earth goes along with the generous sharing of art and research, where complexity can be embraced and intellectual intra-actions are fostered, aiming to endow our praxes, wherever they are operational.
Although closely interlinked with the DAI's academic program, Roaming Assembly editions are not conceived as plain extensions of the regular DAI classes and seminars, but rather envisioned as sovereign happenings, designed to mobilize our bodies, our intelligences.
Framework Roaming Assembly: Gabriëlle Schleijpen
Co-ordination Roaming Assembly: Nikos Doulos
Documentation: Silvia Ulloa; see our VIDEO ARCHIVE
If you want to receive our DAI-BULLETIN on a monthly base you are welcome to register here
DAI wishes to thank Toneelgroep Oostpool for its collegial hospitality.
