So-called Law: Screening & Research Sharing

7.30pm. This event is free but capacity is limited. Please email mary@artsadmin.co.uk to reserve a place.

Join Artsadmin bursary artist Alicja Rogalska and invited guests for a screening of her new video work, followed by talks and discussion about the effects and affects of current changes in immigration law. 

Alicja Rogalska's new video What If As If explores legal fictions in international immigration law. Legal fictions are devices used in legal reasoning when something not true is believed or assumed to be true; they allow for the law to be applied without changing the text of the law. What If As If has been made and researched in collaboration with refugees, asylum seekers and migrants who trained as lawyers in their countries of origin but are currently based in the UK. The video was filmed in the former Court Room at Toynbee Studios and is currently being shown as part of Dreams and Dramas – Law as Literature exhibition at NGBK in Berlin.

Trump's travel ban, EU-citizens' uncertainty over their rights after Brexit, the rise in xenophobic attacks, the resurgence of nationalism worldwide, and the UK government's plans to scrap the Human Rights Act are just some of the examples of current developments and debates surrounding immigration law. In the context of rapidly changing legal systems, the evening is a chance for an informal and open discussion about speculative legal frameworks as possible resistance and the political potential of performance art.

Developed with support from the Artsadmin Artists’ Bursary Scheme. This scheme is supported by Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Arts Council England, the Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation and The Mercers’ Company.

Alicja has invited lawyers and scholars to present their research in response to the subjects touched upon in the video:

Rose Sydney Parfitt is a Lecturer in Law at Kent Law School. She's currently based at Melbourne Law School, where she's undertaking a three-year research project, 'International Law and the Legacies of Fascist Internationalism', funded by the Australian Research Council. Her book, The Process of International Legal Reproduction: Subjectivity, Historiography, Law, Violence, is coming out with Cambridge University Press in 2018.

Sarah Keenan is a lecturer at Birkbeck Law School. Her research draws on legal geography, feminist and critical race theory to rethink the relationship between membership and ownership, offering new perspectives on a range of political issues. She is the author of Subversive Property: Law and the Production of Spaces of Belonging (Routledge 2015).