Margherita Moscardini

The artist Margherita Moscardini, with a team of engineers and lawyers, has made a staircase and a model for legislation into the open ground of the main hall of KW Institute for Contemporary Art. Mimicking a flight of stairs in East Jerusalem—in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, this walkable stone sculpture becomes a fitting stage for the live talk event The Stairway on Trial. 

If this staircase had legal personhood, it would be stateless. In front of the two-states, one-state solution, Moscardini recalls an old resolution, the UN resolution 181 (II), 1947, where the internationalization of a city—or just some buildings—suggested a special, non-state, free-state, a-territorial government.  

The international commoning of this staircase, via legal acrobatics, places the stairway under a legislation model based on the common heritage of mankind, albeit its recognition in international law is still to be tested. 

This series of talks, by the artist, one of the lawyers, and one of the signatories of a single stone block composing the staircase, puts the stairway on trial: prefiguring, imagining possible scenarios on the part of the law-writers; and attesting, substantiating, and testifying from real-life scenarios on the part of the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria/Kongra Star.

Margherita Moscardini is an artist. 
*1981 in Livorno, Italy. Book: Margherita Moscardini. Metropolitan Voids Agency, Archive Books, 2025.

Prof. Lawrence Liang is an academic and lawyer. 
*1974, India. He is Dean of the School of Legal and Socio-Politcal Studies, Ambedkar University, Delhi, India; and co-founder of the Alternative Law Forum, Center for Internet and Society. 

Emîne Osê is a member of the Alliances and Democratic Relations Committee of Kongra Star
*1976 in Heseke, Suriye, Rojava-Kurdistan. Places of belonging: Rojava, Dêrîk. Affiliations: Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), Kongra Star.