Since 2014, Julien Seroussi, a social science researcher, and Franck Leibovici, an artist and poet, have been conducting an unprecedented experiment. Their project, law intensity conflicts, stems from Julien Seroussi’s observations as a legal assistant at the Katanga/Ngudjolo trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, between 2009 and 2014. This experiment, which they call “inquiry-artwork”, uses the tools of art, documentary poetry (poetry that no longer focuses on the “text” as a unit of meaning, but on the “document” as an artifact with pragmatic effects) and the social sciences to analyse and attempt to change the ICC’s current practices of processing materials. The tools take the form of installations, books, workshops and radio interventions. They are intended to be used by Court professionals, as well as by affected communities and researchers – any audience concerned by these trials but isolated from each other. How can civil society take part in international justice, in new forms, for it to become a platform for cultural invention and no longer just a technical institution reserved for experts?
The text, the product of four years of conversation between Virginie Bobin, Franck Leibovici and Julien Seroussi, is presented as a series, published in several episodes, most of which were written in the fall of 2018, except for a few paragraphs written in the spring of 2019. The text covers the stages of law intensity conflicts carried out between 2014 and 2018.
