| art.description.project | Space of Law was made by the creative
collective STUDIO ALIGHT, which consists of
Samantha Hookway, Fredrik Garneij and
Christofer Kanljung (SoL added collaborator
– Alexander Windgård). The variablydimensioned
installation was built first
from a curiosity of answering the following
questions: 1) What is the aesthetics of the
law? And 2) And how could we experience this
with our bodies? Or even hold it in our
hands? And, luckily and with the combined
competencies of the collaboration Studio
Alight was able to create a work that draws
nearer to the answers. As the Studio Alight
website states:
“While navigating inside the law of Sweden
enables the audience to navigate their own way
through the paragraphs and exposes the
complexity in its construction. The bodily
experience of this artwork indicates the
potential of aesthetics displacing subjective
positions and previous understandings.”
Technologically, this work to come alive
uses code as an artistic medium, the law of
nature (gravity in particular) as the
decider of strength of relations and employs
big data visualization techniques. See the
piece via the images in the attached PDF,
the referencing websites, the GP Kultur
Recension (Aug 31, 2019). Yet, also, one can
take a flight through the paragraphs of our
land by visiting: lagen.studioalight.com.
Then, also, as a further reflection and
accompanying exhibition text, ICIA employed
Charlotta Kronblad,lawyer and researcher of
the digitalization of law at Chalmers
University. Kronblad described the work to
activate democratic measures:
“By using digital technologies to combine art
and law, the artists enable totally new
questions. When the law is not spatially
restricted new possibilities emerge as of how to
regard and use it. In times of mass migration
and digitalization, where both material and immaterial borders disperse, it is possible that
we might need to understand and apply nationally
based territorial legislation in novel ways. To
dare to consider this, is not only important but
also urgent. Because the fact is, that we live
in an increasingly complex world where global
changes, technological progress and alternative
systems of government challenges the rule of law
as the optimal one. Contemporary western
democracies, based on the nationalistic rule of
the people under the law, may not be forever. To
build vital and ethical environments for human
co-existence moving forward we might need to
think in new ways about dynamic network of
relations and norms and a development of the
rule of law. This piece of art enables such
thinking. With art as the mediator it is
suddenly possible to question the twodimensional
nature of law and awake thoughts
about the nature and future of the rule of law.”
After exhibiting this autumn at the ICIA,
Space of Law is finding new exhibition
formats and locations. Studio Alight is
currently working with leads of showing this
work in further audiences, for example at
upcoming Vitalis this May, as well as, in
law school classrooms, and even within a
national courthouse in Helsingborg. | sv |
