[Festival] Legal sightseeing and international law

This festival celebrates a decade of Legal Sightseeing as a collaborative research platform,  founded by Renske Vos (Vrij Universiteit Amsterdam) and Sofia Stolk (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam/Asser Institute). It presents the newly published book Legal Sightseeing and International Law (Routledge) and highlights the practice of legal sightseeing, including creative activities, guided ‘tours’, an exhibition, and a festive reception.  

This festival is an invitation to pause and wonder at the spectacular yet mundane practice that we have come to call legal sightseeing. Legal sightseeing signals the widespread ‘eventisation’ of international law: increasingly, international courthouses are becoming top tourist destinations that host public events, exhibitions, and tours. But international law also pops up in more everyday spaces: as the theme for an organised city run or as a symbol printed on a T-shirt or an image on a cookie jar. Legal sightseeing stands for this broad category of encounters between ‘international law’ and ‘the public’ that encompasses many different activities, sites, artefacts, and participants. Legal sightseeing asks how international law is presented to ‘the public’ in these encounters, and in turn wonders what that public shows up for. Findings are presented through a photo blog on www.legalsightseeing.com, which doubles as a platform showcasing experimental and visually-oriented research in international law.  

The book Legal Sightseeing and International Law presents a rich collection of images and research that introduces legal sightseeing as both the phenomenon under study and an experimental research methodology. Structured as a catalogue, the book covers a wide range of iconic and surprising instances of legal sightseeing, located, for example, at the former American Embassy in the Netherlands, the Museum of White Terror in Taipei, in Bulgaria’s capital city, Sofia, and at more traditional sites such as the Peace Palace in The Hague and Courtroom 600 in Nuremberg. By revisiting this selection of projects curated under the legal sightseeing umbrella, the book presents an innovative, visually oriented and collaborative method of research and contributes to academic discussions on international law’s visual turn, its spaces and materiality, and the plurality of international law’s audiences.  

The Legal Sightseeing Festival is an informal interdisciplinary event that will speak to academics, legal professionals, artists, students, and members of the general public interested in international law, politics, and art.

Festival programme

• 16:00 | Walk-in, ice cream, start are you legal sightseeing exhibition

• 16:30 | Welcome: Renske Vos and Sofia Stolk introduce Legal Sightseeing and International Law, moderated by Carl Lewis (Asser Institute).

• 16:50 | Ice-cream break

• 17.15 | Legal Sightseeing pop-up presentations:
  - Eliana Cusato (Tilburg University)
  - Vittoria Becci (European University Institute)
  - Hanna Zwienenberg (VU Amsterdam)
  - Antoine Duval (Asser Institute)

• 18.00 | Guy Livingston (KABK/KC researcher) presents "Lecture with Repetition" by Tom Johnson

• 18:15 | Reception

Co-organisers

• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam 

• Legal Sightseeing

• The VU Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies

• KNIVR

Speakers