‘Carving space’ for comradeship? Para-legal performance and climate justice in the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes

Summary

This article explores how the medium of ‘para-legal’ performance art offers scope to experiment with legal conventions pertaining to climate change using the case study of the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes. Through a series of performative trials, staged in Framer Framed gallery in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes proposed comradeship as a legal concept to foster the emergence of intergenerational, intragenerational and interspecies solidarities. I argue that actors involved in the performance of the Court ‘carve space’ to realise these solidarities through distinct practices of spatial production and re-organisation. However, by engaging with interviewees’ accounts of the trial performances, I suggest that comradeship was expressed lopsidedly – with focus predominantly on the intragenerational inequalities implicated in climate change. Through critical reflection on the material and performative spatialities of the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes, I contribute to discussions surrounding the political capacities of art in times of climate breakdown, and emerging legal possibilities for climate justice.