So hello and welcome, everyone, to T.J. as fourth seminar of Hillary term.
I'm Guy three and along with my colleague Sweat Cleaner, I'm Kocan Meaning or T.J. or this academic year.
And as most of you must already know,
we are an interdisciplinary network of academics and students based out of the faculty of law at the University of Oxford.
And they're all working on issues of transition in societies recovering from conflict as well as authoritarian rule.
So today we have the pleasure of hosting this really exciting book launch.
A very, very warm welcome to Dr. Eliza Ganzi, who is the author of The Justice of Visual Art.
Eliza is a British active ME postdoctoral fellow in international relations at the University of Cambridge,
and she's currently in Australia as an honorary associate at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.
And her research focuses on art and visual culture in international relations and world politics,
particularly in relation to human rights, transitional justice and conflict.
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.
Please keep your video and microphone turned off throughout the webinar.
And please note that we will be recording this presentation and sharing it as a podcast.
And finally, if you have any questions for Eliza, please indicate so in the chat.
And when we call upon you, you can turn your microphone and video on and ask your question.
Alternatively, you can also type your questions out in full in the chat and ask me to read them.
That's it. I said the ferocious. Right.
Thank you so much. I'd like to start by saying a very big thank you to the Office of Transitional Justice
Network for welcoming me to present in the seminar series and in particular to gay chatrooms.
But, Nina,
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,
because I can see names of lots of people that I know are in many different time zones.
So thank you so much. I'm really delighted to be launching the book today with the network because this book arose out
of my APHC research and that research has really shaped by seminar's I attended at the network.
And many people who I met through the network.
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.
So in the next little while, I'm going to introduce the governing thought, which underpins my research.
And then I'll talk about the key contributions and the major claims the book makes.
I find these very briefly at the outset, and then I'm going to elaborate on that in more detail.
But being a book on visual art, I have lots of slides to share. And so I'm going to share my screen.
And let's just get that working. There we go.
So many government sanction mass violence against people within their borders.
And when large portions of the population commit human rights violations against other parts of the population.
How is it possible to reconcile nations and achieve justice?
Because it is not simply possible to imprison large portions of the population.
And really,
no single legal measure can possibly comprehend or respond to that very diverse claims of both individuals and groups who have been affected,
either directly or indirectly, by conflict. So what else can be done?
Governing thought that underpins my research is that there are static and created ways to pursue transitional justice.
And these are ways which had the capacity to address identity,
divisions and exclusions in order to understand and respond to the diverse krames of people affected by conflict,
as well as the intergenerational trauma, social injustices and deep grievances which are both the result of conflict but also its long term cause.
And so this is an argument that really speaks to current debates in international relations, human rights and transitional justice,
as well as art theory and memory studies around how best to address violent and traumatic pasts,
how to reconcile divided nations, and really how to strengthen democratic institutions in the aftermath of conflict.
So in the book, I use a detailed case study of post apartheid South African visual art in two major state sponsored institutions
in order to demonstrate that there are things as pathetic and creative ways to pursue transitional justice.
And these institutions, though, the South African pavilion at the Venice finale in Italy and the banali is a
global art exposition that brings together around 85 states to stage exhibitions.
And the second institution is at the Constitutional Court of South Africa,
which houses a large visual art collection developed by the court and for the court.
So as part of my doctoral research, I conducted about 11 months of participant observation fieldwork at these institutions,
and that fieldwork included 130 interviews with key stakeholders such as judges, government representatives,
staff members, artists and visitors to these institutions, as well as archival research.
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.
So the book makes three key contributions and corresponding arguments.
First, it develops a theoretical framework for understanding transitional justice and visual art.
And this framework shows how art plays a vital role in shaping and communicating
the narratives of individuals so that they take on collective importance.
And in doing so, the past can be shared so that a new political future can be imagined.
The book also develops novel conceptions of visual jurisprudence and cultural diplomacy as forms of transitional justice.
And when I talk about visual jurisprudence, I'm very broadly referring to it as the theory of the visual in law.
And so one of the main arguments I make is that the art collection of the
Constitutional Court of South Africa is a kind of visual jurisprudence in which the
assumptions of the assumptions of justice and what it actually means to uphold
the new constitution in the face of an apartheid past can really be probed.
I also argue that the narratives of transitional justice, which emanate from the South Africa Pavilion at the Venice Art, the finale position,
the state is continuing to heal its internal wounds while actually constructing itself as an archetype
of political transition in order to re-establish its membership of the international community.
And so the book substantiates several claims.
These are that enables and supports transitional justice, communicates justice in powerful and meaningful ways.
Imbeds justice on different political levels.
But the local and the global art becomes a radical form of political participation in times of transition.
And art is critical to the perception and the provision of justice in South Africa.
So consequently, art needs to be more widely considered by political institutions.
And as a result, the research in the book really shifts legalistic conceptions of transitional justice, which edits the inception of the field,
tended to dominate because the book demonstrates that a holistic approach to transitional justice needs to include legal,
social and cultural processes in which visual art has a significant role.
So moving on really to unpack the three key contributions of the book in more detail.
I begin by developing the theoretical framework I mentioned. And I do this through a close visual analysis, really a narrative investigation of one.
I work this out, work as rewind by Get Marx, Meyer, Marx and Philip Miller.
And this was exhibited in the 2013 South Africa Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
So Rewind is an audio visual installation and it's based on testimonies given during
the public hearings of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So it consists of operatic cantatas,
which really present an archive of reimagined voices in the act of remembering and also of images which respond to these testimonies.
So the artwork really embodies a literal and conceptual meeting point between transitional justice and visual art,
because the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the PRC unfolds through rewind and rewind, is giving form through the TSC.
So the images on the screen are shown rewind as it was exhibited at the 2013 Venice Biennale.
And some of the film details of one of the films in that installation to give you a sense of the artwork.
I'm just going to play a short excerpt of one of the film.
This film is based on the testimony of Eunice Mia, who is the mother of one of the people killed Janjalani Mia,
during what later became known as the Guguletu seven incident,
which is when in 1986, seven young anti-apartheid activists were shot by members of the South African Police Service.
One of the guys was shown on TV, but on his chest only to find out it's my son.
So I hadn't done that. I guess, you know, no way in the big chair.
You know, I wish it doesn't use congested hip anymore. What it does it use and just be put to me.
But I did was could just it hit my head.
And David. So I look at rewind and I use rewind to develop the theoretical framework,
which is based on four key ideas that make it exigent and meaningful to transitional justice and vice versa.
And the first idea is about the circulation, political sentiment, and that is memories and emotions.
What I grouped together is sentiment really circulating in rewind,
generating an expectation that the process of reconciliation begins with the projection of a past
that is in need of remembering and a past that must be remembered so that it's not repeated.
The second idea is about the mediation of political agency,
political agency is mediated through the retelling of people's stories and through the reimagining of their testimonies in artistic form.
In Rewind, people are visible and become visible through the processes by which the artwork
came to be created and exhibited through the experience of the artwork.
And it's mediated truth and through the associations that the artwork really sends out into the world,
because politics revolves around what is seen and said, but also whom has the ability to see it and say it.
So the third idea is about the invention or invitation, rather, of political encounters.
Rewind performs a kind of transitional justice in the openings that are invited by aesthetic encounters.
The TSC, for instance, is aesthetically reworked. It's visual spectacle is a vote to the hanging line of headphones at the installation.
At the same time, the TSA is questioned through the way in which the testimony's selectively transposed and received.
And it's through these encounters that the artwork becomes an artistic intervention into South Africa's larger transitional justice narrative.
The final idea is about the invention of political space, Rewind invites and invents both physical,
symbolic and effective spaces which shape and reflect how South Africa's transitional justice narrative is performed.
It presents an image of a state seeking to continue its internal wounds while offering itself up as an archetype of transition.
And so the humanisation of these four ideas really frame two central arguments in the book,
and the first argument arises out of a general meeting about transitional justice.
And that is that an account of transitional justice was without aesthetic dimensions,
is insufficient and it's insufficient precisely because transitional justice is a process that's inseparable from feelings of justice,
from justice being seen, being felt and being thought to be done.
Artworks can offer insightful visions and experiences which really leave an afterlife beyond their creation.
And they can fill out infected topologies in ways that facilitate or stimulate recognition
and feeling of experiences that can provoke us to to travel into other people's worlds,
thinking and feeling our way into the universe. And this recognition is really essential in order to comprehend and respond to
the diverse claims of individuals and groups that are affected by conflict.
So this is a normative argument that really underpins the book.
And on that note, I just want to play a very second a very short second excerpt from the artwork,
which really emphasises this idea about feelings of justice and effective connexions prompted by the artwork.
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.
So. So the second argument I make that emerges from rewind in relation to the theoretical framework.
Is that art plays an important role in animating and activating the narratives of individuals so that they really take on collective importance.
Rewind shares individual stories of pain and suffering so they can be effectively accessed and interpreted by viewers.
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.
The importance of establishing really a shared collective vision of the past has become something of a trope in transitional justice discourse.
So examining rewind offers a static insight that's most central to understanding
South Africa's true transition and simultaneously constitutive of that transition.
The artwork functions to produce and maintain the state's transitional justice narrative.
But it also opens up spaces for new political thinking, new possibilities and new actions in that narrative.
So the invented, physical,
symbolic and effective spaces of rewind shape how South Africa's transitional justice narrative takes on both domestic and international significance.
So in part one of the book, I explore transitional justice at the national level through the Constitutional Court
of South Africa to establish the point of transition from apartheid to democracy.
The court was built on the site of several former notorious prisons and probably the most well-known.
These was called number four prison, where virtually every political prisoner in South Africa in the 20th century,
including Mandela and Gandhi, was incarcerated at some point in the image on the screen.
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.
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,
not only because it has transformed this penal site a bit,
because it also incorporates artworks into the fabric of the building and houses
a large visual art collection that was developed by the court for the court.
So I've included three images on the screen, really,
just to give a sense of how art is integrated and displayed in the court on the left of the screen,
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.
In the centre is the public entrance forward to the court.
And on the right is the public art gallery, which connects the court chamber to its library.
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,
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.
And it continues to be so. The court is focussed on justice and it's founded on art.
And when establishing the court judges, they weren't on the sideline as really may future inhabitants of the courtroom,
but they were on the front pushing and prioritising art to be at the heart of this justice institution.
So I think you go on to examine the spatial politics of the court and the courts, art collector, art collection, theory and architecture.
Our intent intended to symbolise the values in the Constitution.
So I explore five themes that are critical to justice, which are really dominant in the discourse in the court,
both in how people speak about the cup, the court and and in how the court portrays itself.
So far, these things refer to the values rooted in fostered by the Constitution and these being accessibility,
equality, dignity and freedom of expression. While the fifth thing, which is justice under a tree,
really relates to a process of South African constitutionalism that's embedded in in a regional vernacular to part of the identity formation.
So I critically analyse each of these themes by examining how specific artworks and architectural features intervene
in the appearance and the performance of the court are shaping how the Constitution is understood in different ways.
So these material and interventions and the space they create suggests a really key to the provision of justice at the court.
So one example I explore and I've included an image of this on the screen is William Kentridge, his print entitled Sleeper Black.
In interviews, people who work at the court really they regularly cited this artwork as an example of the right to freedom of expression.
And they said this for two reasons. So I've included a quote on the screen from one interview which speaks to this.
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.
The artwork is perceived to challenge conventional paradigms of email,
legatee and artworks and stands in contrast to really portraits of male judges that perhaps normally encountered in courts.
So adding to this subject, the the print appears to be lying in a vulnerable position.
In contrast to images of nude men, which, when they do appear in artworks, tend to be in positions of power.
If you think Renaissance depictions of the ideal male body.
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.
On the other hand, at the location of the artwork contributes to how it supports freedom of expression.
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.
Or it. It was when I was there. So it's not just important that the artwork depicts a vulnerable Ludeman.
It's significant that this artwork is encountered early and at the very entrance to the court.
So it's these two provocations about content and location that combined to connect the artwork to the right to freedom of expression,
suggesting that this freedom arises from the ability to show an image of a nude man in a civic institution,
which in the book I critique is a rather thin conception of freedom of expression.
Yes, it's unexpected in the context of the court because such legal spaces are conventionally circumscribed by perhaps more conservative aesthetics.
So it's not that the artwork itself is about freedom of expression.
In another context, another context,
drama slick in the black might be considered really an innocuous image of a man in a cartoonish style, however, placed in the court.
The artwork takes on new meaning and as a result, the justice institution.
It affects the artwork and in turn, the art reinforced as a notion that central to conceptions of justice, that freedom of expression.
So linking this back to the theoretical framework I mentioned,
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.
I go on to explore three dominant narratives, which I argue emerge from the court's collection,
and these are narratives which recognise people, community and time is really key to the project of justice and democracy in South Africa.
So these narrative play a role in shaping the court's love for transitional justice story because they draw attention to how the impossibility
of attaining universal justice is what actually drives justice practises and the enactment of human rights for particular people,
particular communities at particular times.
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,
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.
And these body maps came out of her workshop, which was part of a Medicine Sans Frontières pilot antiretroviral programme.
The process of body mapping, which is a form of art therapy, was intended to help women come to terms with their diagnosis.
At the time of the workshop in 2002, antiretroviral drugs were not available through public health centres.
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,
requiring the government to provide access to these health services,
particularly for pregnant women to combat the transmission of HIV from mother to child.
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.
It's because it's Petraeus who is the subject of judgement and what is the purpose served?
So I conclude this part of the book. But your eyes in the Courts art collection as a new kind of visual jurisprudence.
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,
become central to the bodies of aesthetic knowledge that shape the appearance of justice and that shape how justice is understood.
So on the screen, I'd broken a cable of PowerPoint presentations, but far too much text on the screen.
But I really wanted to include quotes from some of the interviews about how judges think and feel about the art collection,
because both the judges quoted on the screen talk about the importance of the art collection in creating empathy,
really and enriching their understanding of humanity.
As the judge says, Art helps one understand the healing conditions better than the Lord of the Lowden's.
And the second judge says, art makes me, in a sense, softer, more human and able to understand human means a lot better.
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,
as the clerk says,
it's only through those emotive reactions to stories that we remember the deep importance of the difference between a semicolon and a colon.
So I argue that in such close proximity to the court,
the art collection really inhabits a unique position in which the assumptions of
justice and also justices and what it means to uphold the Constitution can be probed.
So this creates a visual jurisprudence that reflects both the values which underpin
the court as well as the ways of practising justice in post apartheid South Africa.
So part two of the book, I explore transitional justice on the global stage through the South Africa Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Every two years, the Venice finale brings together contemporary art exhibitions of around 85 nations.
It draws in heads of state, ambassadors,
ministers and diplomats who want to participate in and really assure the quality of their estate's representation on this global stage.
It's a Goliath exhibition that really aims to take the pulse of contemporary art and the pulse of the nation's identity,
as well as capturing a global artistic moment.
So it's really a global political opportunity.
In the book, I stop a section with the within a historical overview of South Africa's relationship to the analogy, because in 1968,
protest of the Ben Ali change took place and these were part of the student protests that swept the globe at the time.
These changes included ban in South Africa from exhibiting at the Vietnam War,
which really reflected the global cultural boycott of the apartheid regime.
And it wasn't until 1993, with the prospect of political transition from apartheid to democracy,
that South Africa was really invited back to the Vietnam.
And through this invitation to exhibit again at the big finale, South Africa was being rewarded for political change.
So by chronicling only by chronicling South Africans appearances and exhibitions, being only just some examples which are included on the screen,
I explore the complex national and international politics and diplomatic negotiations which are involved in becoming,
but also remaining a member state of this international organisation.
So I argue that South Africans participation continues to be deeply affected by international and national politics.
Its long absence from the beginning only reverberates through the way in which it
represents itself to this international community and establish itself as a member state,
because since being invited back to be an ally in the South African,
exhibitions have been very different to those of other states in that South Africa has been focussed on
showing a historical breadth of artistic practise and really reinserting its art history back into the BNR.
And this is in contrast to other member states that tend to show very contemporary art installations,
which pepsin is explicitly linked to national identity.
So they examine the geopolitics of the.
And the being really transformed the city of Venice into a global Artscape.
And it has two cradles of influence and prominence. The Giardini and the Somali.
And these are the two areas which has majority national pavilions.
These are highlighted in red on the map, on the screen.
So in the garden compound, the Giardini 29 permanent pavilions were built by states which are longstanding.
This is to be an alley. And these are laid out really like little art embassies.
So I've included on the screen images of these pavilions of Belgium, France, Russia and Germany at the bottom right hand corner.
In the genie of the really the geopolitical axes of the mid 20th century.
And it's a grouping that has its roots in post-war Europe. But by contrast, in the Arsenite family, it houses semipermanent,
I rented spaces of states that are new to the Ben Ali and these newer member states apply to exhibit.
These states really butted against each other in exhibition spaces which are open in the long corridors of crumbling ex naval warehouses.
And we asked, Marlee's still watched over by an active military base next door.
So the images on the towards the top middle of the screen show some examples of these exhibition spaces and the new estate.
Still, those kind of on the margins of this afternoon's are dotted around the city in churches,
palazzos and courtyards, all becoming temporary exhibition spaces.
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,
the closer they are to the epicentre, the more visible the more visited and the more remembered the exhibitions will be.
So these national pavilions become proxies through which states presented images of images themselves.
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.
Because these two states shared an exhibition space in the ASP's alone.
And I do this in order to show how comparisons between states are really forced upon them by virtue of exhibiting in the finale.
I argue that these art escapes provide fertile ground for states to offer an image of themselves.
But these images aren't always necessarily how the states intend.
So I think go on in the book to explore the exhibition entitled Imaginary Fact, which South Africa staged in its 2013 pavilion.
And this was a large group exhibition showing the work of 17 artists.
And what I found was there were really three key narratives about violence which emerge from this exhibition.
The unresolved violence of apartheid era crimes, the structural violence of pervasive practises of discrimination,
and the physical violence to which people continue to be subjected.
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.
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
Black Consciousness movement and anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko at the hands of the security forces in the late 1970s.
In the centre of the screen is an image of Sue Williamson's for 30 years.
Next to his heart, and this documents the apartheid past laws that required every black South African of the
age of 16 to carry a passport that controlled their ability to move around the country.
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.
So I argued that these three narratives are important actions in South Africa's transition because they warn against the repetition of violence.
They document the structure of the violence and they expose the continuing practises of violence in the new South Africa.
But I want to talk a little bit more about the whole work,
because her practise is really interesting and how it really unsettles the state's diplomatic narrative in this particular context.
Some are wholly describes her self as a visual activist, and then this work faces in phases.
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.
Homophobic violence is an ongoing problem in South Africa, and in particular,
the nation is experiencing a backlash of crimes targeted specifically at lesbian women
who are perceived as representing a direct and specific threat to the status quo.
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.
And these crimes are not only underreported due to the stigma associated with them,
they are also underreported by the police and seldom prosecuted as hate crimes on the basis of sexual orientation.
And it's a situation that contributes to the silence around such prejudice related violence
and the simultaneous presence and absence of the portraits draws attention to this violence.
So while Faces and Faces is about restoring black male visibility, it's simultaneously an indictment of current discrimination and a call to action.
Mahoney is advocating for equal rights and treatment during attention to the violence and discrimination faced by the LGBTI community.
So including faces and faces in the South African pavilion also draws attention to the politics within South Africa,
which surrounds Mahoneys visual activism. In 2009,
the then Arts and Culture Minister refused to open an exhibition featuring Holly's work on the
basis that it was what the minister described as immoral because it depicted images of lesbians.
And in doing so, the minister said the exhibition is against nation building.
So this is a vision of the nation that's being circumscribed by heteronormativity.
And this betrays really a disintegrating rainbow nationalism in South Africa.
But it also echoes strategies of silencing all Titti.
So what's interesting is that four years later, Mahola is representing South Africa at the beginning early and the next Arts and
Culture Minister talks about my wholely as an important ambassador for the state.
So in my interview with the consul general of South Africa to Milan Soul M.O.B.,
he talked about how it was in fact vital for South Africa to exhibit Mahoneys work in this context because it
highlights how South Africa is different to other countries on the African continent who criminalise homosexuality.
So what this shows is that there is a vast gap between the sexual liberalness of South
Africa's constitution and its political practise externally on the international stage.
Mahoneys work is embraced, but internally on the national stage, there's a lot more tension surrounding it.
So Mom holds out what it really complicates the government's diplomatic narrative
by exposing the ongoing struggle for representation that exists in South Africa.
So I conclude this part of the book by theorising the exhibition imaginary fact really is unique instance of cultural diplomacy.
Imaginary flat fact plays a paradoxical role in the process of nation building because
it presents a visual image of a nation struggling with ongoing internal complexities
while projecting a collective narrative of a state that has undergone a difficult
transition and come out the other side to reassert itself in the international community.
So by examining South Africa's conception of cultural diplomacy in government,
white papers really over the past 10 years or so, I show how the official image of South Africa as a global competitor,
as a transitions nation,
sits really uncomfortably with the artist's image of South Africa as a transitioning nation that circumscribed by ongoing challenges to human rights.
And I argue that this establishes a glocal of global local, if you like, image of the state, which is really the intention.
That's South Africa's foreign policy agenda. Just to wrap up,
the South African case study really reveals that the meeting point in the relationship between transitional
justice and visual art creates new critical spaces of political recognition and representation.
Art is embedded in creative state building both internally and externally.
Art is fundamental to the appearance,
the understanding and provision of justice in South Africa and of South African justice at its highest judicial level.
Art is critical to how South Africa engages in international relations by
asserting its successful transition while acknowledging that justice is ongoing.
MyState uses visual art from the inside out to reconsider reconceptualize the South African justice
system and from the outside in to re-engage the national community with the South African state.
And so I want to leave you with one board, and that is without the proper recognition of the relationship between art and transitional
justice and without a deeper understanding of how and where that relationship occurs.
The ability to comprehend the complex ways in which the past wants to present is impeded.
And the danger is that without art, transitional justice will fail to fully comprehend and respond to the injustices,
which is a long term cause of conflict.
So as one constitutional court judge said, human understanding and the need for human understanding is actually the true link between art and justice.
Thank you.