People’s Tribunal

When one recognizes the law as a social contract—an “aesthetic,” to use the words of legal scholar and artist Stacy Douglas—then one also recognizes the ability to generate alternate legal systems with distinct definitions of process and justice.

The 13th Berlin Biennale will convene two People’s Tribunals, community-sourced judicial forums to address human rights violations and crimes against humanity perpetrated by government actors, private militias, or corporations. Each tribunal will invite legal professionals, activists, and expert witnesses to weigh in on a different case in which justice was denied by the current governing bodies (often due to those institutions’ varying levels of complicity). While the final outcomes of these tribunals will be symbolic, the process gives us a glimpse of what other systems can be possible when we reject the idea of existing law as absolute.

The first People’s Tribunal, organized in collaboration with the Bana Group for Peace and Development, addresses the repression and persecution of activists in Sudan. A second tribunal, will convene to discuss cultural repression and civic rights in the Philippines. Helping to present evidence will be the German chapter of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines and ALPAS Pilipinas, an advocacy group whose acronym loosely translates to “Alternative Dreams for our Land and our People.” Each tribunal will conclude with an open forum, a discussion among the tribunal’s participants and the audience.

Mediated by the artist duo Sinthujan Varatharajah and Moshtari Hilal, documentation of these tribunals and the evidence gathered for each case will be on view throughout the biennial, allowing the public a chance to make informed contributions to the proceedings.  

Text: Kate Sutton