Art as an Interface of Law and Justice looks at the way in which the ‘call for justice’ is portrayed through art and presents a wide range of texts from film to theatre to essays and novels to interrogate the law. Such calls may have their positive connotations, but throughout history most have caused annoyance. Art is very well suited to deal with such annoyance, or to provoke it.

Frans-Willem Korsten speaks with Pierre d’Alancaisez about art that attempts to support – or disturb – law in pursuit of justice. He discusses Milo Rau’s The Congo Tribunal, Valeria Luiselli’s novel Lost Children Archive, the practice of Forensic Architecture, and Nicolas Winding Refn’s film Only God Forgives. Through art’s interface, impasses are addressed, new laws are made imaginable, the span of systems of laws is explored, and the differences in what people consider to be just are brought to light. 

Frans-Willem Korsten holds the chair in “Literature and Society” at the Erasmus School of Philosophy and works at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society in the Netherlands.