Performing Environmental Justice. Staged Reflections

With Shweta Bhattad, Zuleikha Chaudhari, Başak Ertür, Emilie Gaillard, Shela Sheikh and Radha D’Souza

People’s Tribunals have a long history. They have served for serious reflection upon the relationship between law, rights, and justice. More recently there has been an emphasis on environmental justice, for instance in the International Monsanto Tribunal. What are appropriate epistemological and aesthetic frameworks for considering environmental harm? Can staged hearings and experimental assemblies function speculatively and propositionally in relation to existing legal forums? What might justice look like in these settings and how is it performed? What here is the status of evidence and testimony? Taking Brechts´s theoretical and unfinished text Messingkauf Dialogues as a proposal for a mutual learning encounter, the panel reflects upon various forms of performance and enactment and explores how such spaces function as sites of knowledge and reality production.

Concept: Zuleikha Chaudhari, Shela Sheikh