Watch the film HERE

Dismantling the Faculty of Law. 2021. 19’29” 4K video, colour with sound. Polish with English subtitles.

Premiere at GIBCA – 11th Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art

The Ghost Ship and the Sea Change curated by Lisa Rosendhal talk.

Film folder contains the script written collaboratively with Olga Żyminkowska. Designed by Stefan Andersson 

The film reflects on the tool of law and how it shapes our lives, however unequally. Set as a close observation of the Faculty of Law in Poznań, where my great grandfather, Czesław Znamierowski taught for many years, the work explores his legacy and its moral foundations through a poetically scripted voice. While looking for an absent legislator, the female protagonist comes across material traces of the legal apparatus, as she navigates the physical coordinates of a “soulless” law with no one available to take responsibility or become accountable. Questions and reflections on how the legal code is used to make certain events appear and disappear reverberate through the empty hallways, implicating the misuse of law as a source of violence. The search for tenderness signals the work’s commitment to a wider debate on the role of justice in a deeply divided world. As the impartiality of the law shows itself to be both utopian and cruel, her plea creates a longing for alternative measures through which justice can be served.

The footage in this film is from the Collegium Iuridicum in Poznań. Today, after more than a century, the University is making plans to move the Faculty of Law to a new location, and to turn the building into its museum.

Introduction by Mike Sperlinger