The Art/Law Network has been developed with a distinct desire to create new social relations emerging from the intersections of art and law.
It draws from a range of philosophical and practical traditions, developing a praxis and skills based philosophy inspired by critical legal thought and the philosophy of new materialisms, radical pedagogies, clinical legal education, the alternative art schools movement, contemporary socially engaged art and creative resistances.
The Network seeks to offer an opportunity to think differently about art and law, and the divisions and similarities that bind these two disciplines and ways of thinking together, and what keeps them apart. It hopes to encourage new ways of doing both law and art and forging conversations about socially engaged art, and ultimately a more socially engaged law.
Artists hold a unique place within culture where they can transmit and transmute the political, their art providing a space of advocacy and learning, orchestrating a performative meeting point for the happening of law and politics. Similarly, lawyers occupy an equally unique position within culture and society, where their work is not confined to city commerce but are the original privy for advice, counsel, rights protection, advocacy – they are the voice for the subaltern. Lawyers, artists, and agitators of all creeds, stand as catalysts for social change, the opportunities that their collaboration offer as gateways to forge new ways of being.
