Bogoro, l'œuvre-enquête de Franck Leibovici et Julien Seroussi. #1 Where art enlightens international justice

Summary

At the crossroads of art, poetry and international justice, Switch (on Paper) is publishing a text in the form of a multi-episode investigation, retracing the different stages of a project conducted since 2014 by Franck Leibovici and Julien Seroussi at the International Criminal Court (ICC). This inquiry-artwork takes as its starting point the Katanga/Ngudjolo trial, named after the two militiamen accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in 2003 in the village of Bogoro in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This first text is an introduction to the investigation.

Satellite readings

The Series

The Series : « Art, poetry and international justice »

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.

The Author

The Author : Virginie Bobin

Biography

Virginie Bobin works at the crossroads of research, curatorial and editorial practices, pedagogy and translation. In 2018, she started a practice-based research around the political and affectives takes of translation, in the frame of the PhD-in-prac... [ read more ]

Contributions

Geopolitics by Virginie Bobin

Bogoro, inquiry-artwork by Franck Leibovici and Julien Seroussi #4 Images in the trial

Geopolitics by Virginie Bobin

Bogoro, l’œuvre-enquête de Franck Leibovici et Julien Seroussi #3 Finding out the facts

Geopolitics by Virginie Bobin

Bogoro, l’œuvre-enquête de Franck Leibovici et Julien Seroussi. #2 The Katanga/Ngudjolo trial: a case study

Profile by Virginie Bobin

Ndidi Dike, In the guise of resource control

Geopolitics by Virginie Bobin

Other ways of doing ‒ art, law or social sciences ‒
interview with Franck Leiboici

See all the authors +

biographies

biographies :

franck leibovici (poet, artist)
has attempted to portray, in the form of exhibitions, performances and publications, so-called “low intensity” conflicts from a documentary point of view by using graphic scores and notation systems from experimental music, dance, linguistics – documents poétiques (al dante, 2007), portraits chinois (al dante, 2007), low intensity conflicts – un mini-opéra pour non musiciens (ed. mf, 2019); has published spam mails, 70-hour speeches and amateur sex tape transcriptions (lettres de jérusalem, 2012; filibuster, jeu de paume, 2013, de l’amour, ed. jean-boîte, 2019); has worked on the ecology of the work of art – (des formes de vie) – une écologie des pratiques artistiques (les laboratories d’aubervilliers / questions théoriques, 2012), des récits ordinaires (les presses du monde / villa arson, 2014), refresh! / collecting live art (tate modern / koenig, 2012-2014), the training – an artwork for later / and after (venice biennale, 2017); is currently working, with julien seroussi, on a new cycle of exhibitions and publications (bogoro, eds. questions théoriques, 2016; muzungu, bunkier sztuki, krakow; ngbk, berlin, 2017; cité internationale des arts, paris, 2018; école nationale de la magistrature, bordeaux, 2019; international criminal court, the hague, 2019-2020) around the invention of contemporary international justice and the first trial of the international criminal court (icc) of the hague.

Julien Seroussi
started taking interest in international criminal justice within the course of his dissertation on legal battles around the definitions of universal jurisdiction of national judges. After and experience at the International Criminal Court from 2009 to 2012, and he carried on his career within the War Crime Unit of the Tribunal de Grande Instance of Paris. Recently, he was a member of an official expert group created by the French government on genocidal studies.

[ 1 ]

The title law intensity conflicts refers to another cycle of works by Franck Leibovici, low intensity conflicts (1998-2016), which examined how some contemporary conflicts invent new ways of waging war. Following the geopolitical dimension of these conflicts, this new project focuses on the invention of international justice.
(franck leibovici, low intensity conflicts – un mini-opéra pour non musiciens, ed. mf, 2019)

[ 2 ]

Franck Leibovici, “Sur quoi opère l’art”, interview with Cristelle Terroni, La Vie des idées, 14 October 2016. http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Sur-quoi-opere-l-art.html (Consulted in October 2018).

[ 3 ]

Between 2014 and 2018, the project was presented to the Witte de With centre for contemporary art (Rotterdam); to the Ricard Foundation, the FIAC, the Kandinsky Library, the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum and the Institut des Études Avancées, as well as on radio stations France Culture and Chimurenga; it has been exhibited at art centres in Bunkier Sztuki (Krakow), nGbK (Berlin), La Chaufferie (Strasbourg), and the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris).

[ 4 ]

Juger- Créer. Regards sur la Cour pénale internationale, from 26 November to 14 December 2018 at the Cité internationale des arts, Paris.

Since 2014, Julien Seroussi, a social science researcher, and Franck Leibovici, an artist and poet, have been jointly investigating the tools, protocols, standards and procedures at work in an international justice system that is constantly reinventing itself. Their project stems from Julien Seroussi’s experience as an assistant to one of the judges of the Katanga/Ngudjolo…

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