Exhibition: Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes

25 Sep –
13 Feb 2022

Exhibition: Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes

The Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC) is a collaboration between Framer Framed, Indian academic, writer, lawyer and activist Radha D’Souza and Dutch artist Jonas Staal, commissioned and developed by Framer Framed. The project consists of a large-scale installation in the form of a tribunal that prosecutes intergenerational climate crimes.

The inauguration of the tribunal will take place on 24 September 2021. From 28-31 October, the CICC will hold hearings against Unilever, ING, Airbus and the Dutch State.

Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021-2022). Photo: Ruben Hamelink

The CICC will hold hearings in which evidence will be presented by prosecutors and witnesses relating to intergenerational climate crimes committed by corporations and states acting in concert. This is followed by the presentation of evidence of alternative forms of collective action in defense of intergenerational climate justice. Co-produced by Framer Framed Amsterdam, the CICC focuses on corporations registered in the Netherlands as well as the legal frameworks established by the Dutch state system supportive of the corporations. The proceedings of the tribunal will be led by four judges: Radha D’Souza, Sharon H. Venne, Nicholas Hildyard and Rasigan Maharajh. The legal framework of the CICC is based on D’Souza’s book What’s Wrong with Rights? (Pluto Press, 2018), a critical analysis of neoliberal legal institutions.

The CICC will provide evidence of past and present climate crimes by looking at their impact on the here and now, as well as on planetary life in the future. As such, the tribunal rejects the linear, individualised narratives that underlie the current legal system. The hearings will be documented online. The evidence and testimony files are then presented to both institutional and activist organisations.

In addition to prosecutors, witnesses and the public, the tribunal consists of an ecology populated by extinct animals, plants and ammonite fossils. Each of them, in a different language, is referred to as ‘comrade’. These non-human ancestors are both evidence of past intergenerational climate crimes and witness to the collective effort of the CICC to contribute to intergenerational climate justice in the present and future.

The performative tribunal takes place in an arena-like installation, where the audience – acting in the role of a public jury – sits surrounded by the presences of extinct species. These species take the form of paintings and weavings and represent a fraction of the species extinction caused by human activities within systems of settler colonialism and capitalism. They form part of an archival network titled Comrades in Extinction. Each species is depicted alongside the word ‘comrade’ in different languages, emphasising the practice of more-than-human solidarity in the CICC’s climate justice.

The CICC can be used free of charge for study groups, gatherings and events by activists, researchers, students a.o. that are working in the field of climate justice.

New Iterations
After the initial presentation at Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2021-2022) iterations have been presented at Kunsthalle Münster, Germany; Kansalaistori Square, Helsinki, Finland; Oil Tank Culture Park, Seoul, South Korea; The first Dutch Pavilion at the 14th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea; and the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.

Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021-2022). Photo: Ruben Hamelink

Public Hearings

October 28-31, 2021

The hearings include evidentiary testimony and presentations from individuals and collectives representing Blue Planet Project, The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), Machester International Law Centre, Kenya Land Alliance, Oyu Tolgoi Watch (OT Watch Mongolia), Pueblos Indígenas Amazónicos Unidos en Defensa de sus Territorios (PUINAMUDT), Réseau d’Information et d’Appui aux ONG Nationales (RIAO-RDC), Stop Wapenhandel – European Network Against Arms Trade, Synergie Nationale des Paysans et Riverains du Cameroun (SYNAPARCAM), Vettiver Collective, WALHI West Java (Friends of the Earth Indonesia), Watch The Med, and more.

All hearings have been recorded and can be viewed here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/9091118

Jonas Staal, Comrades in Extinction, Study (2020-2021)

The CICC Book

In 2024 the CICC publication was published by Framer Framed, with extensive documentation and reflection on the project. This publication brings together the work of academic Radha D’Souza and Dutch visual artist Jonas Staal. The project consists of a large-scale installation in the form of a tribunal that prosecutes intergenerational climate crimes. The book consists of three parts. Cases takes a closer look at four major cases brought against the Dutch state, Unilever, ING Group and Airbus Industries for intergenerational climate crimes. Judges introduces the panel of judges who oversee the public hearings. Finally, Reflections offers critical essays by theorists Tobias Dias, Ashley Maum and Joram Kraaijeveld, among others.

Publication: Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2024)

D’Souza and Staal’s stunningly ambitious CICC defines a horizon beyond systems of property and world-ending climate crimes.
—T. J. Demos, author of Radical Futurisms: Ecologies of Collapse, Chronopolitics, and Justice-to-Come

D’Souza and Staal’s radical approach to the consideration of responsibilities and mutual respect, arrives to this modern, alienating and demeaning world as a bucket full of tiny papers with memories written on them.
—Ramón Vera-Herrera, GRAIN (Latin America) and edito Biodiversidad, Sustento y Culturas

The book is available to purchase at our exhibition space or online.

Iterations of CICC

Kunsthalle Münster, Germany
In November 2021, part of the CICC traveled to Kunsthalle Münster in Germany, where it was part of the exhibition Nimmersatt? Imagining Society without Growth.

Radha D‘Souza & Jonas Staal, Comrades in Extinction (2021) in Kunsthalle Munster, Germany. Photo: LWL/Hanna Neander

Kansalaistori Square, Finland
In August 2022 a 15-meter Comrades in Extinction tower, consisting of images of extinct animals, was built on Kansalaistori Square, facing the parliament building of Helsinki in Finland. The tower turned into a live festival of remembrance and resistance that calls for regeneration of life and species.

Radha D‘Souza & Jonas Staal, Comrades in Extinction tower (2022), Helsinki, Finland

Oil Tank Culture Park, South Korea
A new iteration of the project Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes: The Law on Trial opened on the 18th of November 2022 in Oil Tank Culture Park in Seoul, South Korea. Situating The Law on Trial in the Oil Tank Culture Park, a former oil depot, brings D’Souza and Staal’s work to the site of the crime: fossil capitalism, and the fossil elites that have benefited from it. Building their installation from the remnants of the fossil industry that created the tank, such as defunct oil barrels, proposes to build on the ruins of extractive systems a new proposition: The Intergenerational Climate Crimes Act — a new legal imaginary that centers on intergenerationality, interdependency and regeneration across the human and non-human world; a vision not of the law, but of justice, in which humans, animals and plants gather as comrades to regenerate the world anew.

The Gwangju Biennale Pavilion, South Korea
Framer Framed is delighted to present a new iteration of the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes, entitled Extinction Wars. Framer Framed is hosting the first Netherlands Pavilion of the 14th Gwangju Biennale, taking place between 7 April and 30 July 2023 in Gwangju, South Korea.

The Gwangju Biennale Pavilion will take place alongside the Gwangju Biennale’s main exhibition, soft and weak like water, with the nine participating cultural organisations working on their exhibitions in cooperation with pre-allocated culture and art institution counterparts in the Gwangju area.

Initiated in 2018, the Pavilion involves exhibitions from prominent international cultural organisations to break down borders between different art environments and communicate a message unique to the city of Gwangju. With three organisations represented at the 12th Gwangju Biennale in 2018 and two at the 13th Gwangju Biennale in 2021, this year’s Pavilion will be the largest yet, with arts and culture organisations from nine different countries. The Netherlands Pavilion, produced by Framer Framed, will be held at the Gwangju Museum of Art.

Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes – Extinction Wars (2023), at the first Netherlands Pavilion of the 14th Gwangju Biennale in Gwangju, South Korea. Photo: Jonas Staal

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
In 2023, Van Abbemuseum included the CICC in its collection. The new purchase was extensively presented to the public.

Exhibition view The space between us (2023), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Photo: Almicheal Fraay

Continue reading

An introduction to the project by D’Souza and Staal for Errant Journal #2 on Slow Violence can be read on our website here. The Errant Journal issue also includes reflections on intergenerational climate crimes by the CICC judges and can be purchased here.

The exhibition catalogue with background information on the project can be downloaded here.

Ashley Maum, part of Framer Framed’s research and production team, wrote an article focusing on the presence of oil in the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes for the new issue of Kunstlicht Magazine – The Worldliness of Oil: Recognition and Relations, which can be read here.

Radha D’Souza’s book What’s Wrong with Rights? (Pluto Press, 2018) can be purchased at Framer Framed as well as a selection of other books.

The extensive archive of Comrades in Extinction can be found here.

Jonas Staal, Comrades in Extinction, Study (2020-2021)

Project Team

Radha D’Souza (lawyer, writer, academic); Jonas Staal (artist); Josien Pieterse & Cas Bool (founding directors, Framer Framed); Paul Kuipers (architect); Remco van Bladel (designer); Ashley Maum (researcher and co-programmer, Framer Framed); Kees Stad (researcher and co-programmer); Nadine Gouders (coordinator and researcher, Studio Jonas Staal); Jean Medina (production coordinator, Framer Framed); Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei (translation advisor); Ruben Hamelink (filmmaker and photographer); Dinara Vasilevskaia (designer, Framer Framed); Rolien Zonneveld (head of creation and (social) media strategy, Framer Framed); Betül Ellialtioglu (communication and PR coordinator, Framer Framed); Irene de Craen (translation); Michael Klinkenberg, Roelof Vossebeld, Lies van Dam, Daan Hoffman, Noud Vossebeld, Nick van Dijk, Thomas de Kroon, Tim van Elferen, Iwan Kolk, Bas Verduijn, Freerk Wieringa, Alja Bronswijk (production team installation, The Adventures of Mr. Soundmount).

Partners

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven,
Textiellab, Tilburg.

Supported by

Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fonds voor de Kunst; Mondriaan Fund; Gemeente Amsterdam – Stadsdeel Oost; Stimuleringsfonds voor Creatieve Industrie; Outset Netherlands.