More than Human Rights Gathering
March 14, 2024, 7pmHow can an interdisciplinary encounter between art and law foster ways of thinking that allow us entry into the more-than-human world? How can embodied ways of being and creating advance the rights and legal protections of actants beyond the human? What should lawyers and artists understand about each other’s vocabularies that would help develop systems for interspecies mutuality?
Canal Projects will host a conversation between Cesar Rodríguez-Garavito, founder of MOTH, Jaqueline Gallant, lawyer at NYU Law’s Earth Rights Advocacy (ERA), and the Lithuanian-born artist and filmmaker Emilija Škarnulytė, on the occasion of the launch of the publication More than Human Rights. The volume discusses the philosophical, legal, and scientific foundations of the More than Human Rights framework as well as its implications for ideas and practices in fields such as law, human rights, ecology, politics, and storytelling.
The event provides an opportunity to understand how together the arts and the law can collaborate to propose better practices for entangling with the more-than-human world.
César Rodríguez-Garavito: César Rodríguez-Garavito is the founding director of the More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Project and the Earth Rights Advocacy Program at NYU School of Law. He is a Professor of Clinical Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. César is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner whose work and publications focus on climate change, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the human rights movement. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Open Global Rights. César has been an Adjunct Judge of the Constitutional Court of Colombia, a member of the Science Panel for the Amazon, and a lead litigator in climate change, socioeconomic rights, and Indigenous rights cases.
Jacqueline Gallant: Jackie Gallant is a lawyer at the NYU Law’s Earth Rights Advocacy (ERA), where she helps run the More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Project and works on legal actions, research, and projects and initiatives addressing the intersection between existential environmental threats like biodiversity loss and climate change and human and more-than-human rights. Jackie holds a JD (cum laude) from NYU School of Law and a BA (magna cum laude) in International Relations from Brown University.
Emilija Škarnulytė (b. 1987, Vilnius) is a Lithuanian-born nomadic artist and filmmaker. Working between the realms of the documentary and the imaginary, Škarnulytė makes films and immersive installations exploring deep time and invisible structures. She works in realms that range from the cosmic and geological to the ecological and political. She most recently presented works at MORI Art Museum, Kiasma, Gwangju Biennale, Helsinki Biennale, Vilnius Biennale, Henie Onstad Triennale, Penumbra. Her work was presented in solo exhibitions at Ferme-Asile, Sion (2023); Kunsthaus Pasquart, Biel/Bienne (2021); Den Frie, Copenhagen (2021); National Gallery of Vilnius (2021); Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2017); Contemporary Art Centre CAC of Vilnius (2015). Prizes awarded to her include the 2023 Ars Fennica Award and the 2019 Future Generation Art Prize. She represented Lithuania at the XXII Triennale di Milano and participated in the Baltic Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. She has films in the collections of the IFA, HAM, Kadist Foundation and Centre Pompidou, and her works been screened at the Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museum of Modern Art in New York, and numerous film festivals.
