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Watch the first UK screening of Frame of Accountability: (Un)Touching Ground (2022) written and directed by Helene Kazan. This will be followed by a conversation between artists Helene Kazan and Marwa Arsanios on the intersecting lines of law, war and critical ecology, moderated by Gina Heathcote.

(Un)Touching Ground is part of Kazan’s film installation series Frame of Accountability. The work closely traces British neo-colonial strategies and interventions of planned destruction and development across Lebanon and Syria in the 1940’s, with the view to understanding the wider regional and global consequences of such events. The project engages feminist, decolonial, critical-legal and artistic practice and theory to explore the possibilities of dismantling the effects of law as a form of structural violence.

Helene Kazan is an artist, research-based practitioner and recent 2022 Graham Foundation Grant Awardee for interdisciplinary and multimedia project ‘Frame of Accountability’. The work has been developed in support as Artist-in-Residence at the Law and Theory Lab, Westminster University (2022-2023) and as 2018-2020 Vera List Centre Fellow, the New School, New York. Kazan is a Senior Lecturer at the School of the Arts, Oxford Brookes University, and received her doctorate from the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London. Kazan has exhibited and published work in exhibitions and with museums and institutions internationally.

Marwa Arsanios is an artist, filmmaker and researcher who reconsiders politics of the mid-twentieth century from a contemporary perspective, with a particular focus on gender relations, urbanism and industrialisation. She approaches research collaboratively and seeks to work across disciplines. Solo shows include: Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2021); Skuc Gallery, Ljubljana (2018); Beirut Art Center (2017); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Kunstinstituut Melly FKA Witte de With, Rotterdam (2016) and Kunsthalle Lissabon, Lisbon (2015). Her work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions including: Documenta 15 (2022), Sharjah Biennale (2019) and Home Works Forum, Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2010, 2013, 2015).

Gina Heathcote is a Professor of Gender Studies and International Law at SOAS University of London, where she convenes modules on gender, sexuality and the law, international law, and collective security. Her research engages feminist methodologies as a means to address international law and the use of force, collective security, law’s violence and legal authority. She is co-editor, with Dr Vanja Hamzic, of the Routledge Series on Feminist and Queer International Law and is currently writing on book on posthuman, critical and queer feminisms and ocean governance. 

Images: Stills. Frame of Accountability: (Un)Touching Ground (2022) by Helene Kazan. Courtesy of the artist.