Summary: | Is pictorial language able to convey a juridical abstraction? This co-authored text addresses that question in the context of the geo-political division of Africa after the Berlin Africa Conference (Congo Conference), as a means to conceptualise colonial rule in 1884/85 – and its manifold grave consequences – as a historical by-product of Europe’s political and aesthetic modernity. Is there any value in representing the image of genocide, (while acknowledging the ‘impossibility’ of its representation)? With these issues in mind, lawyer Malte Jaguttis and artist Dierk Schmidt offer a commentary based on their project, ‘The division of the earth — Tableaux on the legal synopses of the Berlin Africa Conference’.
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