ATLAS OF VISUAL LAW

In the context of EU migration laws, official visual representations demonstrate legal and judicial procedures as linear systematized processes, by eliminating the sociopolitical frames that surround the law. The simplifying approach in depicting asylum procedures contradicts with the level of complexity and the intersecting factors that appear in the law implementation processes. Furthermore, the instrumentalization of migration laws in political narratives, and shifting legal battels between court rooms, political agendas and the social arena remain as ambiguous mechanisms with unseen dimensions for laypeople.

PROJECT
In cooperation with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), the project aims to visually represent the mechanisms of legal strategies in the context of human rights, based on literature resources and in court situations. In this context, the focal points are a) to visually demonstrate the invisible connections between legal means, political powers and social injustice in the context of EU migration laws, in and beyond court rooms; b) to represent the factors of injustice in the context of border rights, that causes legal struggles, political and social tensions in the EU, through factual cases of pushbacks.

The project understands legal visualizations as epistemological means, that communicate legal processes and legislative provisions. Furthermore, it demonstrates diagrammatic possibilities in mediating and representing the legal norms as visual narratives. With the assumption that visualizations can showcase unseen dimensions and relations, in and around the law. Therefore, it has the potential of becoming a working tool for collective actors and social movements in their emancipatory political struggles.