PICTORIAL GLOSSARIES
The Law is difficult to understand. It needs the glossator to explain, discuss and translate it, applying methods of marginal or interlinear annotations. Images belong to the elemental core of the body of law and the production of juridical meaning in visual terms.
The following pictorial glossaries give examples of the “ratio visiva” of the legal world, that reach from the representational to the sensual realm of legal normativity, drawing out a visual rationale from the conflicting rulings of legal texts, that belong also to what is called the “force” of law.
#3_LOOKING FOR THE COMMON GOOD. VISUAL RHETORIC AND HUMAN RIGHTS
The claim for universal human rights is not restricted to proclamations of international conventions. Therefore, regarding human rights as only relating to the administration of law overlooks emotional ties, affective appeals and deep-seated convictions that drive the grounds of this discourse (Sliwinski). Questions about the medium of photography and the emergence of human rights after WWII have lately strongly shaped academic discourse. Even long before images have been the subject or manifestoes of debates on universal rights of all humankind. This “pictorial glossary” aims to present research on the role of images within the history of human rights from early modern times until today (read more).
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| Movement | Memory | Empathy |
#2_THE VISUALITY OF FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the German Grundgesetz (Basic Law) the research group “The Nomos of Images. Manifestation and Iconology of Law” presents examples of artistic engagement with different principles that regard questions of fundamental rights, such as the right to privacy, the right to asylum, gender equality and the inviolability of human dignity. (read more)
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| The Obligation of Ownership |
#1_AESTHETICS OF RESISTANCE
By means of the visual formula of resistance and revolt disseminated in the media, political systems are depicted as just or unjust, democratic or undemocratic. In the “Age of Resistance”, in which we see an increase in emancipatory and civic action, such images are disseminated ubiquitously. Through the socio-technical architecture of social media they not only hold a firm place in the attention economies of the present, but also inform the formal repertoires of artists. Artists who, as activists and dissidents, point to political grievances and legal inconsistencies, define a new and diverse genre. This canonized category of “political art” responds not just to particular social and political issues. Through their socio-critical and social actions, such artists also deliberately place themselves in a changed relationship to existing law.
The pictorial glossary “Aesthetics of Resistance” attempts to define various forms of resistance exploring the multiple aesthetics of protest. By contrasting popular strategies of political engagement and their artistic appropriation, the glossary aims at a critical analysis (read more).
