Imagine you are in New York, taking a stroll down 46^th Street and suddenly there you see it: the UN Headquarters. It is a building, an icon, the materialization of the organization which name and logo you use repeatedly throughout teaching and research. Here it stands in concrete form: you can touch it, visit it, take a selfie. The UN explicitly facilitates such sightseeing practices on its premises. International law geeks and unsuspecting tourists alike queue up to enter the Visitor Centre, buy a ticket, join a tour, visit the General Assembly hall, and seek out a blue helmet in the gift shop (Figure 1). Children can join the special ‘UN Kids Corridor’ tour with interactive games, quizzes, and role-playing that ‘help young visitors understand the work of the UN and how it relates to their daily lives’. ^{Footnote 1} Visitors get acquainted with a carefully crafted narrative about the work of the UN. They can absorb the story, but also ignore it, misunderstand it, criticize it, or be distracted by the surroundings.

Figure 1.

UN gift shop in New York. Photo: Nina Krijnen.

This spectacular yet trivial manifestation of international law and its partly anticipated, partly unpredictable encounter with a plurality of audiences exemplifies what we call ‘international legal sightseeing’. ^{Footnote 2} We find these encounters at sites that are particularly designed to gaze at international law, for example, the UN Visitor Centre, or a human rights film festival but also at unexpected places such as a market stall selling Peace Palace cookie jars, or an advert for an international peace movie contest on the window of a bakery. If one takes an approach of wonder and curiosity, ^{Footnote 3} encounters with international law can be found in unusual places, sometimes accidental or with unintended effects. ^{Footnote 4} Through such occurrences, we have become interested in how international law is presented to ‘the public’, and in turn in what that public shows up for, and how art often is a mediator in that encounter. The question that drives our engagement with these sites and practices of legal sightseeing is: what is international law doing here? There are at least two ways of understanding this question. On the one hand, it opens-up from our amazement at the manifestation of and encounter with international law at a particular instance: what is it doing here?! On the other hand, we wonder what it does to bring international law to this encounter: what is it doing? For the purpose of this editorial we want to invite the reader along to three stops of legal sightseeing to experience how these two versions of the question arise and to give some tentative answers. At this point, we will not engage with a thorough theorization of the production (who creates these sites and why), nor with a socio-legal inquiry into the reception (how is it experienced and by whom) ^{Footnote 5} but we describe and analyse the place of encounter and ponder upon the question of what it means to study international law through its sights; with a sense of wonder as our main driver.

By taking legal sightseeing seriously as part of the international legal practice, we situate ourselves within the emerging literature on international law’s materiality, visuality, and everyday life. ^{Footnote 6} We also reach out to the work on international law’s dramatized discourses and the use of commercial and/or artistic tools to justify and enforce its institutional authority. ^{Footnote 7} An interest in legal sightseeing to us means an interest in the mundane as well as the spectacular side of international law. By inviting tourists to peek behind the scenes, the spectacular of international law has become part of the everyday fabric of the institutional activities. By, for example, turning a running contest into a ‘Peace Run’, a mundane activity is elevated into the realm of global affairs.

Below, we engage with the multiple faces of legal sightseeing by describing three overlapping and interacting modalities of its encounter: events, sites and objects. The best way of getting a grasp of what we mean by this is for us to showcase and discuss different instances of legal sightseeing. In what follows we do so by stopping at three sites that fascinate us. In line with the rather intuitive character of the legal sightseeing approach, the examples are chosen quite randomly: the Just Peace festival in The Hague; the Nuremberg Palace of Justice; and the exhibition ‘Hybrid Peace’ curated by Vasyl Cherepanyn. They are, however, all three indicative of legal sightseeing and its many manifestations. We use these examples to show how legal sightseeing as lens can apply in various ways and how it invokes similar questions in different contexts.

The showcasing of these snapshots signals how widely legal sightseeing occurs. Some examples might spark recognition, whereas others are perhaps more curious. It is true that there is a certain discomfort that shines through in our discussion of the encounter between international law and its public. That discomfort should not be taken to signify our judgment of this encounter, rather it is the point at which we begin to look again. We all are likely to partake, ourselves included, in practices of legal sightseeing. Rather than only trivial, these encounters can be important. We would like to use this Editorial to introduce legal sightseeing as a lens that allows for a creative and intuitive approach to international law, and to pause to reflect on what it means to find ourselves in this encounter.

Just Peace Festival

The aim of the annual Just Peace Festival in The Hague is ‘to give peace & justice an important place in the hearts and actions of our inhabitants, entrepreneurs and organizations’, whom it seeks to attract. ^{Footnote 8} It is attended by around 40,000 visitors annually. ^{Footnote 9} The festival is organized as a collaborative effort between cultural, educational, and international institutions in the week leading up to the International Day of Peace of the United Nations. The programme consists of, e.g., exhibitions, film screenings, debates, walks, concerts, lectures, and a run. ^{Footnote 10} Justice literally becomes a festival. Part of this festival is ‘The Hague International Open Day’ ^{Footnote 11} on which international institutions open their doors to visitors or organize extra activities such as tours, Q&A sessions, meet&greets, and children’s activities such as the OPCW colouring competition (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

The Hague International Open Day 2017. Photo: Sofia Stolk.

We consider the Just Peace Festival as exemplar of the eventization of international law, in which justice becomes a spectacle:

The celebration of international institutions and their ability to bring prosperity to the world is also part of the larger narrative of the city of The Hague, which actively brands itself as the ‘City of Peace and Justice’. Of course, a festival has – by definition – a festive character. This is emphasized by the many references to the celebration of peace and justice throughout the events. Yet most of these events have a serious undertone as well, even if overall a feeling of empowerment and optimism prevails. This is not unique to the Just Peace festival; a similar tension between the festive and the serious can occur at a – still growing – variety of human rights film festivals. Where on the one hand it can make for a relaxing evening out to watch a film, the subject matter of these films is often serious and sometimes harrowing. ^{Footnote 13}

The Just Peace festival is not part of the everyday of international law, but of the once-a-year. It is an event that recurs annually. The exceptional character of the event is meant to attract the public but what does the public show up for? On this special occasion, visitors can enter a building that they would otherwise not be allowed to access. There is an almost childlike sensationalism and excitement in entering an otherwise forbidden space. Once inside, institutions show their most spectacular sides: not the offices, paperwork, and photocopy machines, but the tanks, photos of victims, stories of how these institutions ‘make the world a safer place’. Is it unimaginable that an audience would want to see the files piled up on the corners of desks, the coffee stains in the carpet, the abandoned water cooler? Such trivia make the space real. In a way, the festival assumes that international law, as it is, is not attractive enough by presenting a certain stylized image of what international law is.

Visiting one of the discussion programmes in the Peace Palace during the 2017 festival, led us to reflect on the particular setting and audience. The event treats its audience to a multisensory experience. There is wine at the entrance, the room is dynamically set-up around an oval stage, speakers wear headsets and make no use of paper but perform their speech freely walking around, surrounded by photographers and film crews. All presentations are live-streamed on Facebook. Not only words but also dance, cartoons, images, artworks, documentary film, and music are doing the talking. The speakers are invited because they are, in different ways, ‘setting peace and justice in motion’. All contributions start with a personal anecdote, helping the audience to visualize different times and different spaces, to empathize with the story. From a legal sightseeing perspective we were wondering: Who showed up? Who did the event reach? Was it thought-provoking or preaching to the choir? A large part of the audience seemed to consist of students in, for example, international relations, international law, and development studies. Their attendance had both an idealistic and a pragmatic significance. Next to questions about substance, they wanted to know how to get a job in an organization contributing to a more peaceful society. In most questions and contributions, peace and justice were celebrated as the ideal, but some cynicism about the potential for action was also aired. Still, in the end, hope and optimism prevailed, reinforced by the musical performances, promotion of crowdfunding campaigns and drinks receptions. Both the setting and the content explicitly appealed to the festive character of the event, adding to the spectacular, idealized dimension of international law. ^{Footnote 14}

Courtroom 600

The second site we stop at as a prime example of legal sightseeing makes for quite a different type of experience: a visit to the exhibition Memorium Nürnberger Prozesse in the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg. Courtroom 600 pauses at a grave historical moment in international law: at the scene of the International Military Tribunal, which followed the end of the Second World War. At the same time, as a tourist sight, it cannot get away from the trivialities of museum reality, such as signposting and the logistics of an (audio)tour. By emphasizing its history, an ‘ordinary’ active Court turns into a spectacle.

In Figure 3, we see our colleague, audio-guide in hand, museum signposting in the background, looking out of place. We see him facing the camera unsure of whether to smile. He seems not quite yet to have forgotten about the beautiful weather outside, and is still readjusting to the site he has just entered, Courtroom 600. Here he sits caught in between recognition and estrangement at finally seeing this momentous space. On the one hand, he is spending a relaxing weekend break, on the other hand and at the same time, he is imagining all that has passed here.

Figure 3.

A tour in Courtroom 600. Photo: Valeria Posada Villada and Dion Kramer.

Looking at this exhibition in Nuremberg as part of legal sightseeing, should not be understood as a negation of the historical importance of the International Military Tribunal or of the seriousness of the subject matter it dealt with. Memorials and museums have a distinct role in guarding and signifying history and memory, ^{Footnote 15} specifically with regard to war and conflict, which is discussed at length in the fields of for example museum studies, ^{Footnote 16} transitional justice and memory law. ^{Footnote 17} It is precisely because of this distinct role, that we are interested in the encounter between this Court as museum/memorial and its visitors. There is such a wide range of literature that discusses different aspects of this phenomenon that our brief glance will necessarily be superficial and undertheorized. But we hope to offer some insight into the many types of questions the legal sightseeing lens can invoke.

The touristification of this particular historical site can be analysed as an instance of ‘dark tourism’, a term coined by Lennon and Foley. ^{Footnote 18} ‘Dark tourism’ is a loaded term in a sensitive debate, ^{Footnote 19} but for the purpose of this piece we would like to follow the definition of Tarlow: ‘visitations to places where tragedies or historically noteworthy death has occurred and that continue to impact our lives’, ^{Footnote 20} which does justice to the diversity of manifestations and connected motivations and experiences. ^{Footnote 21} Other examples of such sites are the Museum of Genocide and Killing Fields in Cambodia, ^{Footnote 22} the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, ^{Footnote 23} and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. ^{Footnote 24} Sites such as the grounds and buildings of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps have also been labelled as belonging to a sub-category ‘Holocaust tourism’. ^{Footnote 25}

The Nuremberg courtroom signifies, in a way, a slightly more ‘light’ note in this otherwise dark history and array. Nuremberg has an ambivalent past as both a significant city in Nazi Germany and the place where the Nazi leadership faced trial after the war, the latter being emphasized in the memorial exhibition. ^{Footnote 26} The courthouse, as a memorial, highlights the role of law to speak to power, and of the power of law to bring criminals to justice. As an audience, being in the actual courtroom can almost make you ‘feel’ this history.

Visiting a place with such a grave history evokes both feelings of interest and estrangement. On the one hand, it turns an abstract but famous place into a real, physical place, yet at the same time it alters or even breaks down the imagination. Posada Villad and Kramer note that ‘[a]s soon as one goes inside Courtroom 600, it is hard to imagine that the Nuremberg Trials took place in the same place’. ^{Footnote 27} The current building speaks to its history in different ways. The courthouse itself has been renovated and reorganized, ^{Footnote 28} but the original atmosphere is preserved through the exhibition of iconic artefacts: the benches of the accused and the original docket, as well as historical photos and videos. The exhibition on the third floor of the Palace allows visitors to ‘re-experience’ being in the audience in 1945. ^{Footnote 29} One experiences the real courtroom and re-experiences the courtroom as it once was at the same time.

Furthering the ambition to re-experience the past yet following a more experimental course, a team of researchers has begun the development of an ‘immersive learning experience using virtual reality (VR) and game design to bring to life archival materials from the Nuremberg Trials’. ^{Footnote 30} The Courtroom 600 project ‘seeks to help users have a personal encounter’ thus ‘reviving holocaust history with virtual reality’. ^{Footnote 31} This project potentially opens-up ways of virtually ‘accessing’ and engaging with the space of Courtroom 600 from anywhere else. For all the care and awareness of this group of researchers, we can also admit to a sense of unease to find the words ‘VR game’ in relation to Courtroom 600. There is a gravity to the space that does not evaporate all that easily, as you are there where it happened, but will that persist virtually? And, what will such a project do to the experience and presentation of international law and its history with those who enter its virtual reality?

Adding to this complex interplay of past and present is the fact that Courtroom 600 is still an active court. This means that visitors can only access the place when the court is not in session. This combined coexistence of past and present neatly illustrates the everyday spectacular that characterizes legal sightseeing. International courthouses as tourist destination regularly have this dual function: the ICC and ICJ both accommodate visitors with exhibitions and guided tours, but are also active courts. This example also invites further reflection on the power of buildings as iconic sites. ^{Footnote 32} Former ‘legal’ sights can be re-appropriated into tourist sites, for example, prisons and embassy buildings have been turned into galleries or hotels. ^{Footnote 33} These places advertise themselves by appealing to their legal histories. The privilege of accessing these otherwise closed-off sites attracts, even if the original occupants have left a long time ago. There are different stakes in this re-appropriation: for example, we can identify a commercial logic, an emotional logic but also a logic of repetition. Manifestations of repetition, re-enactment, or recalling are more often used in international law as a way of linking the present to the past and to simultaneously solidify and update certain meanings. ^{Footnote 34} Visitors experience, or rather re-experience, the historical power and spectacle of international law. Visiting, seeing, and touching the place gives both concrete form and shapes the imagery of international law. The meaning of international law is transformed by its re-appropriation, physically, and mentally.

Hybrid Peace

Seen from a legal sightseeing perspective, there is a thin line dividing the memorial from the art gallery. In fact, the visiting experience may be similar in part. Through mostly visual means history and politics are presented to the visitor. ^{Footnote 35} Yet, in turning to the gallery we find not an international institution presenting international law but the artist invoking international law in her work. ^{Footnote 36} At the two previous stops, art and artists were drawn in to mediate the communication from international law to the public. Art and artists are instrumental in, for example, designing a festival, curating a memorial exhibition, or sculpting a memorial site. However, in galleries and art museums the work of artists on display is not commissioned in the same way.

At Stroom, a gallery based in The Hague, Ukrainian artist Vasyl Cherepanyn curated the exhibition ‘Hybrid Peace’ (Figure 4). ^{Footnote 37} In the exhibition, Cherepanyn evokes allusions to international law to further a political premise. The exhibition in this way seeks to reconsider the hybridity of the boundaries between war and peace in Europe today. Through staging (video)installations, screenings, and discussions, the idea of peace on the continent of a united Europe is revisited. ‘[W]here there is Europe, there is peace … Yet the EU finds itself surrounded by a belt of wars at its south and east.’ ^{Footnote 38} Hybrid warfare has meant that through new technologies war is extended far beyond the battlefield to society, both in and outside of Europe. Conversely, Cherepanyn reconceptualizes this development as hybrid peace, emphasizing how this development affects not only our understanding of war and warfare, but also of peace and safety. He then concludes:

Figure 4.

Visitors at Hybrid Peace, Stroom, The Hague. Photo: Renske Vos.

Cherepanyn calls on The Hague, City of Peace and Justice, as both the geographical location where the exhibition is held and for what that location stands for as representation of international law and its community. He does not curate this exhibition on behalf of the City of Peace and Justice, he aims to address it. In the space of the gallery he invokes international law and its constituency to frame his political message.

Art gallery Stroom – where Hybrid Peace was exhibited – has a running programme called See You in The Hague, which aims to tell ‘a multifaceted narrative about the ambitions and reality of The Hague as International City of Peace and Justice’. In a reflection on this programme, curator Brigitte van der Sande writes:

It is, then, not ‘just’ international institutions that resort to art for their communication. Artists also communicate with international law by calling attention to international legal issues through art. ^{Footnote 41} In this category, art that stands out is, for example, the presentation of Ai Weiwei’s Law of the Journey, a life-size, 60 metre, aluminium and PVC sculpture of refugees crowded on board an inflatable boat, at the 2018 Sydney Biennale. ^{Footnote 42} Also interesting to name in this light, is the work by the research agency Forensic Architecture, which investigates cases of human rights violations and – in addition to presenting investigations in international courtrooms, official inquiries and commissions – exhibits findings in art and cultural institutions. ^{Footnote 43}

In the reverse, art is instrumental for courts and tribunals to communicate their message to a wider audience or to present its identity. The ICC frequently hosts exhibitions, a recent example is the photo exhibition ‘Justice Matters’, ^{Footnote 44} the imagery of the ICJ is inextricably linked to the architecture of the Peace Palace and the works of art that decorate its halls, ^{Footnote 45} and artists have become part of transitional justice initiatives. ^{Footnote 46} These multiple ways of mobilizing art, either in support of international legal practices or as a critical intervention – or both – draw different audiences, with different effects.