Dreams&Dramas

The nGbK reader Dreams & Dramas. Law as Literature is a reader presenting the relationship between law describing and creating reality, including ourselves as persons, participating in communities. On the basis of four narrative axes – person, community, territory and property – the book demonstrates the ways in which these concepts are in relation to and of impact to one another.
What one might think as granted in the fact it is not, it is much more the product of particular story telling. By bringing a few cases from the reader, we will re-tell and re-draw the land & property & person story. As Mateusz Stępień, one of the reader contributors, wrote: legal fiction might spring to a lay person’s mind as a kind of science fiction. But this since fiction organises our world into a very specific map.
In addition it traces these dual vectors (law’s description and creation of reality) in consideration also of the performative dimension of law, which is to say, the ways in which it and its manifold effects are acted upon and read. The book also examines the tools used by the law, such as cut and montage, indirect speech, and legal fiction. This brings to light the narrative nature of the law and, pertinently, the matter of which stories are being heard and which are not. The publication ensued from the eponymous exhibition of nGbK in spring 2017 helped to forge a space for communication about Dramas & Dreams. “Dreams&Dramas. Law as Literature” is a reader presenting the relationship between law describing and creating reality, including ourselves as persons, participating in communities. On the basis of four narrative axes – person, community, territory and property – the book demonstrates the ways in which these concepts are in relation to and of impact to one another.

With textual&visual contributions by: Carlos Amorales, Anca Benera+Arnold Estefan, Patrick Bernier, Ernst Bloch, Anna Bottomley & Hilary Lim, Colin Dayan, Kieran Dolin, Costas Douzinas, Marina Gržinić, Debora Hirsch & iaia filiberti, Ran Hirschl & Ayelet Shachar, Valerio Nitrato Izzo, Ivan Jurica Agnieszka Kilian, franck leibovici & Julien Seroussi, Bruno Latour, Danilo Madič, Kathryn Milun & Geralad Torres, Evgeny Pashukanis, Rupali Patil, Agnieszka Piksa, Alicja Rogalska, Issa G.Shiviji, Kama Sokolnicka, Agata Stajer, Mateusz Stępień, Jasper J. Verlinden, Lee Ann S. Wang