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So hello and welcome, everyone, to T.J. as fourth seminar of Hillary term.

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I'm Guy three and along with my colleague Sweat Cleaner, I'm Kocan Meaning or T.J. or this academic year.

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And as most of you must already know,

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we are an interdisciplinary network of academics and students based out of the faculty of law at the University of Oxford.

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And they're all working on issues of transition in societies recovering from conflict as well as authoritarian rule.

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So today we have the pleasure of hosting this really exciting book launch.

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A very, very warm welcome to Dr. Eliza Ganzi, who is the author of The Justice of Visual Art.

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Eliza is a British active ME postdoctoral fellow in international relations at the University of Cambridge,

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and she's currently in Australia as an honorary associate at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.

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And her research focuses on art and visual culture in international relations and world politics,

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particularly in relation to human rights, transitional justice and conflict.

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But before I turn to her so we can all hear about this wonderful book, I have some really quick housekeeping rules for everyone to keep in mind.

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Please keep your video and microphone turned off throughout the webinar.

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And please note that we will be recording this presentation and sharing it as a podcast.

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And finally, if you have any questions for Eliza, please indicate so in the chat.

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And when we call upon you, you can turn your microphone and video on and ask your question.

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Alternatively, you can also type your questions out in full in the chat and ask me to read them.

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That's it. I said the ferocious. Right.

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Thank you so much. I'd like to start by saying a very big thank you to the Office of Transitional Justice

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Network for welcoming me to present in the seminar series and in particular to gay chatrooms.

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But, Nina,

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for all their work in organising today and thank you so much to everyone for coming in via Zoome and being here despite various time differences,

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because I can see names of lots of people that I know are in many different time zones.

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So thank you so much. I'm really delighted to be launching the book today with the network because this book arose out

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of my APHC research and that research has really shaped by seminar's I attended at the network.

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And many people who I met through the network.

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So it's really lovely to kind of do that full circle and be back here, or I'll be virtually talking about the book today.

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So in the next little while, I'm going to introduce the governing thought, which underpins my research.

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And then I'll talk about the key contributions and the major claims the book makes.

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I find these very briefly at the outset, and then I'm going to elaborate on that in more detail.

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But being a book on visual art, I have lots of slides to share. And so I'm going to share my screen.

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And let's just get that working. There we go.

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So many government sanction mass violence against people within their borders.

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And when large portions of the population commit human rights violations against other parts of the population.

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How is it possible to reconcile nations and achieve justice?

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Because it is not simply possible to imprison large portions of the population.

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And really,

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no single legal measure can possibly comprehend or respond to that very diverse claims of both individuals and groups who have been affected,

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either directly or indirectly, by conflict. So what else can be done?

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Governing thought that underpins my research is that there are static and created ways to pursue transitional justice.

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And these are ways which had the capacity to address identity,

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divisions and exclusions in order to understand and respond to the diverse krames of people affected by conflict,

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as well as the intergenerational trauma, social injustices and deep grievances which are both the result of conflict but also its long term cause.

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And so this is an argument that really speaks to current debates in international relations, human rights and transitional justice,

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as well as art theory and memory studies around how best to address violent and traumatic pasts,

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how to reconcile divided nations, and really how to strengthen democratic institutions in the aftermath of conflict.

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So in the book, I use a detailed case study of post apartheid South African visual art in two major state sponsored institutions

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in order to demonstrate that there are things as pathetic and creative ways to pursue transitional justice.

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And these institutions, though, the South African pavilion at the Venice finale in Italy and the banali is a

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global art exposition that brings together around 85 states to stage exhibitions.

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And the second institution is at the Constitutional Court of South Africa,

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which houses a large visual art collection developed by the court and for the court.

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So as part of my doctoral research, I conducted about 11 months of participant observation fieldwork at these institutions,

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and that fieldwork included 130 interviews with key stakeholders such as judges, government representatives,

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staff members, artists and visitors to these institutions, as well as archival research.

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So this is really the kind of data and the kind of material that I'm drawing on throughout the book to make the arguments.

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So the book makes three key contributions and corresponding arguments.

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First, it develops a theoretical framework for understanding transitional justice and visual art.

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And this framework shows how art plays a vital role in shaping and communicating

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the narratives of individuals so that they take on collective importance.

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And in doing so, the past can be shared so that a new political future can be imagined.

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The book also develops novel conceptions of visual jurisprudence and cultural diplomacy as forms of transitional justice.

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And when I talk about visual jurisprudence, I'm very broadly referring to it as the theory of the visual in law.

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And so one of the main arguments I make is that the art collection of the

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Constitutional Court of South Africa is a kind of visual jurisprudence in which the

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assumptions of the assumptions of justice and what it actually means to uphold

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the new constitution in the face of an apartheid past can really be probed.

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I also argue that the narratives of transitional justice, which emanate from the South Africa Pavilion at the Venice Art, the finale position,

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the state is continuing to heal its internal wounds while actually constructing itself as an archetype

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of political transition in order to re-establish its membership of the international community.

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And so the book substantiates several claims.

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These are that enables and supports transitional justice, communicates justice in powerful and meaningful ways.

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Imbeds justice on different political levels.

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But the local and the global art becomes a radical form of political participation in times of transition.

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And art is critical to the perception and the provision of justice in South Africa.

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So consequently, art needs to be more widely considered by political institutions.

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And as a result, the research in the book really shifts legalistic conceptions of transitional justice, which edits the inception of the field,

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tended to dominate because the book demonstrates that a holistic approach to transitional justice needs to include legal,

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social and cultural processes in which visual art has a significant role.

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So moving on really to unpack the three key contributions of the book in more detail.

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I begin by developing the theoretical framework I mentioned. And I do this through a close visual analysis, really a narrative investigation of one.

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I work this out, work as rewind by Get Marx, Meyer, Marx and Philip Miller.

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And this was exhibited in the 2013 South Africa Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

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So Rewind is an audio visual installation and it's based on testimonies given during

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the public hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So it consists of operatic cantatas,

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which really present an archive of reimagined voices in the act of remembering and also of images which respond to these testimonies.

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So the artwork really embodies a literal and conceptual meeting point between transitional justice and visual art,

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because the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the PRC unfolds through rewind and rewind, is giving form through the TSC.

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So the images on the screen are shown rewind as it was exhibited at the 2013 Venice Biennale.

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And some of the film details of one of the films in that installation to give you a sense of the artwork.

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I'm just going to play a short excerpt of one of the film.

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This film is based on the testimony of Eunice Mia, who is the mother of one of the people killed Janjalani Mia,

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during what later became known as the Guguletu seven incident,

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which is when in 1986, seven young anti-apartheid activists were shot by members of the South African Police Service.

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One of the guys was shown on TV, but on his chest only to find out it's my son.

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So I hadn't done that. I guess, you know, no way in the big chair.

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You know, I wish it doesn't use congested hip anymore. What it does it use and just be put to me.

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But I did was could just it hit my head.

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And David. So I look at rewind and I use rewind to develop the theoretical framework,

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which is based on four key ideas that make it exigent and meaningful to transitional justice and vice versa.

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And the first idea is about the circulation, political sentiment, and that is memories and emotions.

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What I grouped together is sentiment really circulating in rewind,

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generating an expectation that the process of reconciliation begins with the projection of a past

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that is in need of remembering and a past that must be remembered so that it's not repeated.

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The second idea is about the mediation of political agency,

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political agency is mediated through the retelling of people's stories and through the reimagining of their testimonies in artistic form.

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In Rewind, people are visible and become visible through the processes by which the artwork

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came to be created and exhibited through the experience of the artwork.

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And it's mediated truth and through the associations that the artwork really sends out into the world,

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because politics revolves around what is seen and said, but also whom has the ability to see it and say it.

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So the third idea is about the invention or invitation, rather, of political encounters.

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Rewind performs a kind of transitional justice in the openings that are invited by aesthetic encounters.

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The TSC, for instance, is aesthetically reworked. It's visual spectacle is a vote to the hanging line of headphones at the installation.

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At the same time, the TSA is questioned through the way in which the testimony's selectively transposed and received.

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And it's through these encounters that the artwork becomes an artistic intervention into South Africa's larger transitional justice narrative.

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The final idea is about the invention of political space, Rewind invites and invents both physical,

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symbolic and effective spaces which shape and reflect how South Africa's transitional justice narrative is performed.

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It presents an image of a state seeking to continue its internal wounds while offering itself up as an archetype of transition.

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And so the humanisation of these four ideas really frame two central arguments in the book,

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and the first argument arises out of a general meeting about transitional justice.

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And that is that an account of transitional justice was without aesthetic dimensions,

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is insufficient and it's insufficient precisely because transitional justice is a process that's inseparable from feelings of justice,

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from justice being seen, being felt and being thought to be done.

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Artworks can offer insightful visions and experiences which really leave an afterlife beyond their creation.

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And they can fill out infected topologies in ways that facilitate or stimulate recognition

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and feeling of experiences that can provoke us to to travel into other people's worlds,

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thinking and feeling our way into the universe. And this recognition is really essential in order to comprehend and respond to

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the diverse claims of individuals and groups that are affected by conflict.

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So this is a normative argument that really underpins the book.

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And on that note, I just want to play a very second a very short second excerpt from the artwork,

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which really emphasises this idea about feelings of justice and effective connexions prompted by the artwork.

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It's an excerpt. It's based on testimony by a mother about the murder of her son, who was shot by security police at the age of allit.

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So. So the second argument I make that emerges from rewind in relation to the theoretical framework.

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Is that art plays an important role in animating and activating the narratives of individuals so that they really take on collective importance.

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Rewind shares individual stories of pain and suffering so they can be effectively accessed and interpreted by viewers.

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And in doing so, the past of one person becomes the present of many people so that hopefully together a new political future can be imagined.

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The importance of establishing really a shared collective vision of the past has become something of a trope in transitional justice discourse.

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So examining rewind offers a static insight that's most central to understanding

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South Africa's true transition and simultaneously constitutive of that transition.

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The artwork functions to produce and maintain the state's transitional justice narrative.

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But it also opens up spaces for new political thinking, new possibilities and new actions in that narrative.

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So the invented, physical,

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symbolic and effective spaces of rewind shape how South Africa's transitional justice narrative takes on both domestic and international significance.

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So in part one of the book, I explore transitional justice at the national level through the Constitutional Court

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of South Africa to establish the point of transition from apartheid to democracy.

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The court was built on the site of several former notorious prisons and probably the most well-known.

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These was called number four prison, where virtually every political prisoner in South Africa in the 20th century,

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including Mandela and Gandhi, was incarcerated at some point in the image on the screen.

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You can see the rainbow facade of the court, and to the left of that, under the corrugated iron roof is part of the old number for prison.

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This is this is now preserved as a museum. So the court space or the court building is really a unique space by international comparison,

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not only because it has transformed this penal site a bit,

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because it also incorporates artworks into the fabric of the building and houses

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a large visual art collection that was developed by the court for the court.

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So I've included three images on the screen, really,

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just to give a sense of how art is integrated and displayed in the court on the left of the screen,

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you'll see the public entrance doors, the court and these display South Africa's Bill of Rights carved in sign language into the wood.

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In the centre is the public entrance forward to the court.

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And on the right is the public art gallery, which connects the court chamber to its library.

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So by tracing the court's development with a particular focus on the unique policies and processes through which the art collection came into being,

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I argue in the book that art has been a central component of the most significant institution to emerge in all of South Africa's transition.

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And it continues to be so. The court is focussed on justice and it's founded on art.

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And when establishing the court judges, they weren't on the sideline as really may future inhabitants of the courtroom,

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but they were on the front pushing and prioritising art to be at the heart of this justice institution.

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So I think you go on to examine the spatial politics of the court and the courts, art collector, art collection, theory and architecture.

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Our intent intended to symbolise the values in the Constitution.

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So I explore five themes that are critical to justice, which are really dominant in the discourse in the court,

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both in how people speak about the cup, the court and and in how the court portrays itself.

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So far, these things refer to the values rooted in fostered by the Constitution and these being accessibility,

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equality, dignity and freedom of expression. While the fifth thing, which is justice under a tree,

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really relates to a process of South African constitutionalism that's embedded in in a regional vernacular to part of the identity formation.

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So I critically analyse each of these themes by examining how specific artworks and architectural features intervene

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in the appearance and the performance of the court are shaping how the Constitution is understood in different ways.

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So these material and interventions and the space they create suggests a really key to the provision of justice at the court.

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So one example I explore and I've included an image of this on the screen is William Kentridge, his print entitled Sleeper Black.

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In interviews, people who work at the court really they regularly cited this artwork as an example of the right to freedom of expression.

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And they said this for two reasons. So I've included a quote on the screen from one interview which speaks to this.

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So on the one hand, and the artwork is an example of the right to the freedom of expression because it's an image of a nude man.

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The artwork is perceived to challenge conventional paradigms of email,

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legatee and artworks and stands in contrast to really portraits of male judges that perhaps normally encountered in courts.

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So adding to this subject, the the print appears to be lying in a vulnerable position.

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In contrast to images of nude men, which, when they do appear in artworks, tend to be in positions of power.

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If you think Renaissance depictions of the ideal male body.

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So it's not just the the artwork is of a nude man. It's the artwork is of a vulnerable nude man, which appears to be significant.

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On the other hand, at the location of the artwork contributes to how it supports freedom of expression.

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It's an image of nude men prominently in the public entrance to the court, and it's one of the first artworks encountered on the court.

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Or it. It was when I was there. So it's not just important that the artwork depicts a vulnerable Ludeman.

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It's significant that this artwork is encountered early and at the very entrance to the court.

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So it's these two provocations about content and location that combined to connect the artwork to the right to freedom of expression,

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suggesting that this freedom arises from the ability to show an image of a nude man in a civic institution,

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which in the book I critique is a rather thin conception of freedom of expression.

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Yes, it's unexpected in the context of the court because such legal spaces are conventionally circumscribed by perhaps more conservative aesthetics.

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So it's not that the artwork itself is about freedom of expression.

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In another context, another context,

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drama slick in the black might be considered really an innocuous image of a man in a cartoonish style, however, placed in the court.

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The artwork takes on new meaning and as a result, the justice institution.

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It affects the artwork and in turn, the art reinforced as a notion that central to conceptions of justice, that freedom of expression.

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So linking this back to the theoretical framework I mentioned,

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the encounters generated by the artwork and the space it creates are really important actions in the perception and provision of justice at the court.

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I go on to explore three dominant narratives, which I argue emerge from the court's collection,

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and these are narratives which recognise people, community and time is really key to the project of justice and democracy in South Africa.

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So these narrative play a role in shaping the court's love for transitional justice story because they draw attention to how the impossibility

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of attaining universal justice is what actually drives justice practises and the enactment of human rights for particular people,

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particular communities at particular times.

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So why not work, I suggest that epitomises this is a series of body maps created by the band Minority Women's Group in Cape Town,

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and it included an image of two of these on the screen. So each body map is a self-portrait created by a woman who is HIV positive.

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And these body maps came out of her workshop, which was part of a Medicine Sans Frontières pilot antiretroviral programme.

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The process of body mapping, which is a form of art therapy, was intended to help women come to terms with their diagnosis.

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At the time of the workshop in 2002, antiretroviral drugs were not available through public health centres.

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And this is a position the Constitutional Court sought to change when it ruled on access to HIV AIDS treatment and the right to healthcare,

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requiring the government to provide access to these health services,

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particularly for pregnant women to combat the transmission of HIV from mother to child.

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So through these body maps, there is really a direct visual connexion between the practise of justice that's enacted by the court and the artwork's.

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It's because it's Petraeus who is the subject of judgement and what is the purpose served?

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So I conclude this part of the book. But your eyes in the Courts art collection as a new kind of visual jurisprudence.

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And I analysed the ways in which people, especially judges, talk about the art collection in order to show how art works at the court,

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become central to the bodies of aesthetic knowledge that shape the appearance of justice and that shape how justice is understood.

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So on the screen, I'd broken a cable of PowerPoint presentations, but far too much text on the screen.

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But I really wanted to include quotes from some of the interviews about how judges think and feel about the art collection,

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because both the judges quoted on the screen talk about the importance of the art collection in creating empathy,

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really and enriching their understanding of humanity.

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As the judge says, Art helps one understand the healing conditions better than the Lord of the Lowden's.

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And the second judge says, art makes me, in a sense, softer, more human and able to understand human means a lot better.

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While the law clerk talks about art as creating an awareness of the bigger picture and the importance of the detailed work of the war,

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as the clerk says,

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it's only through those emotive reactions to stories that we remember the deep importance of the difference between a semicolon and a colon.

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So I argue that in such close proximity to the court,

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the art collection really inhabits a unique position in which the assumptions of

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justice and also justices and what it means to uphold the Constitution can be probed.

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So this creates a visual jurisprudence that reflects both the values which underpin

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the court as well as the ways of practising justice in post apartheid South Africa.

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So part two of the book, I explore transitional justice on the global stage through the South Africa Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

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Every two years, the Venice finale brings together contemporary art exhibitions of around 85 nations.

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It draws in heads of state, ambassadors,

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ministers and diplomats who want to participate in and really assure the quality of their estate's representation on this global stage.

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It's a Goliath exhibition that really aims to take the pulse of contemporary art and the pulse of the nation's identity,

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as well as capturing a global artistic moment.

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So it's really a global political opportunity.

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In the book, I stop a section with the within a historical overview of South Africa's relationship to the analogy, because in 1968,

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protest of the Ben Ali change took place and these were part of the student protests that swept the globe at the time.

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These changes included ban in South Africa from exhibiting at the Vietnam War,

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which really reflected the global cultural boycott of the apartheid regime.

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And it wasn't until 1993, with the prospect of political transition from apartheid to democracy,

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that South Africa was really invited back to the Vietnam.

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And through this invitation to exhibit again at the big finale, South Africa was being rewarded for political change.

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So by chronicling only by chronicling South Africans appearances and exhibitions, being only just some examples which are included on the screen,

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I explore the complex national and international politics and diplomatic negotiations which are involved in becoming,

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but also remaining a member state of this international organisation.

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So I argue that South Africans participation continues to be deeply affected by international and national politics.

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Its long absence from the beginning only reverberates through the way in which it

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represents itself to this international community and establish itself as a member state,

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because since being invited back to be an ally in the South African,

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exhibitions have been very different to those of other states in that South Africa has been focussed on

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showing a historical breadth of artistic practise and really reinserting its art history back into the BNR.

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And this is in contrast to other member states that tend to show very contemporary art installations,

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which pepsin is explicitly linked to national identity.

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So they examine the geopolitics of the.

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And the being really transformed the city of Venice into a global Artscape.

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And it has two cradles of influence and prominence. The Giardini and the Somali.

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And these are the two areas which has majority national pavilions.

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These are highlighted in red on the map, on the screen.

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So in the garden compound, the Giardini 29 permanent pavilions were built by states which are longstanding.

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This is to be an alley. And these are laid out really like little art embassies.

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So I've included on the screen images of these pavilions of Belgium, France, Russia and Germany at the bottom right hand corner.

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In the genie of the really the geopolitical axes of the mid 20th century.

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And it's a grouping that has its roots in post-war Europe. But by contrast, in the Arsenite family, it houses semipermanent,

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I rented spaces of states that are new to the Ben Ali and these newer member states apply to exhibit.

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These states really butted against each other in exhibition spaces which are open in the long corridors of crumbling ex naval warehouses.

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And we asked, Marlee's still watched over by an active military base next door.

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So the images on the towards the top middle of the screen show some examples of these exhibition spaces and the new estate.

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Still, those kind of on the margins of this afternoon's are dotted around the city in churches,

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palazzos and courtyards, all becoming temporary exhibition spaces.

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So states jostle for the best locations, knowing that although it will never be possible to join in the imperial ranks of the Geo Danie,

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the closer they are to the epicentre, the more visible the more visited and the more remembered the exhibitions will be.

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So these national pavilions become proxies through which states presented images of images themselves.

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The international community. And to share this in the book, by contrast, South Africa's 2013 National Pavilion with that of the United Arab Emirates.

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Because these two states shared an exhibition space in the ASP's alone.

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And I do this in order to show how comparisons between states are really forced upon them by virtue of exhibiting in the finale.

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I argue that these art escapes provide fertile ground for states to offer an image of themselves.

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But these images aren't always necessarily how the states intend.

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So I think go on in the book to explore the exhibition entitled Imaginary Fact, which South Africa staged in its 2013 pavilion.

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And this was a large group exhibition showing the work of 17 artists.

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And what I found was there were really three key narratives about violence which emerge from this exhibition.

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The unresolved violence of apartheid era crimes, the structural violence of pervasive practises of discrimination,

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and the physical violence to which people continue to be subjected.

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So I analysed free artworks, which I suggest pitman's each to these narrative, and I've shown some details of these artworks on the screen.

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So on the left is one part of David Cohen is the journey which details the events which led to the death of the leader of the

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Black Consciousness movement and anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko at the hands of the security forces in the late 1970s.

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In the centre of the screen is an image of Sue Williamson's for 30 years.

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Next to his heart, and this documents the apartheid past laws that required every black South African of the

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age of 16 to carry a passport that controlled their ability to move around the country.

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And on the right is the Neelima Holly's faces in Faison's, which is a series of portraits designed to restore a black queer visibility.

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So I argued that these three narratives are important actions in South Africa's transition because they warn against the repetition of violence.

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They document the structure of the violence and they expose the continuing practises of violence in the new South Africa.

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But I want to talk a little bit more about the whole work,

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because her practise is really interesting and how it really unsettles the state's diplomatic narrative in this particular context.

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Some are wholly describes her self as a visual activist, and then this work faces in phases.

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There are Tenggara gaps in the grid of 200 photographs, which signify the missing portraits of people who have been the victims of hate crimes.

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Homophobic violence is an ongoing problem in South Africa, and in particular,

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the nation is experiencing a backlash of crimes targeted specifically at lesbian women

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who are perceived as representing a direct and specific threat to the status quo.

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So violence often takes the form of what's being termed corrective rape, where men rape women in order to so-called cure their lesbianism.

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And these crimes are not only underreported due to the stigma associated with them,

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they are also underreported by the police and seldom prosecuted as hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation.

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And it's a situation that contributes to the silence around such prejudice related violence

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and the simultaneous presence and absence of the portraits draws attention to this violence.

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So while Faces and Faces is about restoring black male visibility, it's simultaneously an indictment of current discrimination and a call to action.

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Mahoney is advocating for equal rights and treatment during attention to the violence and discrimination faced by the LGBTI community.

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So including faces and faces in the South African pavilion also draws attention to the politics within South Africa,

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which surrounds Mahoneys visual activism. In 2009,

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the then Arts and Culture Minister refused to open an exhibition featuring Holly's work on the

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basis that it was what the minister described as immoral because it depicted images of lesbians.

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And in doing so, the minister said the exhibition is against nation building.

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So this is a vision of the nation that's being circumscribed by heteronormativity.

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And this betrays really a disintegrating rainbow nationalism in South Africa.

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But it also echoes strategies of silencing all Titti.

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So what's interesting is that four years later, Mahola is representing South Africa at the beginning early and the next Arts and

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Culture Minister talks about my wholely as an important ambassador for the state.

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So in my interview with the consul general of South Africa to Milan Soul M.O.B.,

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he talked about how it was in fact vital for South Africa to exhibit Mahoneys work in this context because it

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highlights how South Africa is different to other countries on the African continent who criminalise homosexuality.

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So what this shows is that there is a vast gap between the sexual liberalness of South

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Africa's constitution and its political practise externally on the international stage.

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Mahoneys work is embraced, but internally on the national stage, there's a lot more tension surrounding it.

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So Mom holds out what it really complicates the government's diplomatic narrative

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by exposing the ongoing struggle for representation that exists in South Africa.

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So I conclude this part of the book by theorising the exhibition imaginary fact really is unique instance of cultural diplomacy.

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Imaginary flat fact plays a paradoxical role in the process of nation building because

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it presents a visual image of a nation struggling with ongoing internal complexities

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while projecting a collective narrative of a state that has undergone a difficult

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transition and come out the other side to reassert itself in the international community.

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So by examining South Africa's conception of cultural diplomacy in government,

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white papers really over the past 10 years or so, I show how the official image of South Africa as a global competitor,

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as a transitions nation,

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sits really uncomfortably with the artist's image of South Africa as a transitioning nation that circumscribed by ongoing challenges to human rights.

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And I argue that this establishes a glocal of global local, if you like, image of the state, which is really the intention.

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That's South Africa's foreign policy agenda. Just to wrap up,

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the South African case study really reveals that the meeting point in the relationship between transitional

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justice and visual art creates new critical spaces of political recognition and representation.

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Art is embedded in creative state building both internally and externally.

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Art is fundamental to the appearance,

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the understanding and provision of justice in South Africa and of South African justice at its highest judicial level.

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Art is critical to how South Africa engages in international relations by

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asserting its successful transition while acknowledging that justice is ongoing.

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MyState uses visual art from the inside out to reconsider reconceptualize the South African justice

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system and from the outside in to re-engage the national community with the South African state.

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And so I want to leave you with one board, and that is without the proper recognition of the relationship between art and transitional

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justice and without a deeper understanding of how and where that relationship occurs.

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The ability to comprehend the complex ways in which the past wants to present is impeded.

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And the danger is that without art, transitional justice will fail to fully comprehend and respond to the injustices,

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which is a long term cause of conflict.

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So as one constitutional court judge said, human understanding and the need for human understanding is actually the true link between art and justice.

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Thank you.