The CICC School Programme is a series of talks, workshops, assemblies, screenings, guided walks, and performances designed to activate the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes: The British East India Company on Trial installation at Ambika P3 and across London and provide additional context for and examining the threads of research that connect intergenerational climate crimes to our present. A full schedule for the CICC School is included below.
The Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC) was established to critique the liberal legal system that privileges states and corporations over ecologies and communities. In addition to holding evidentiary hearings against the East India Company, British Crown and others, the London iteration of the CICC will host a CICC School at Ambika P3 from 8-24 April 2024. The CICC School will deepen and expand knowledge of the intergenerational and colonial impacts of climate crimes perpetrated by corporations and states acting in concert since the era of the East India Company. Bringing together critical scholars, public intellectuals, activists, campaign groups, community organisations, students, artists, and others, the CICC School will host a series of talks, workshops, screenings, performances, and guided walks that activate the installation in Ambika P3 and shine light on the intergenerational and colonial nature of crimes against ecologies and communities, natures and cultures.
Schedule
Booking is essential for all CICC School programmes.
All events are free and will take place at Ambika P3 unless otherwise noted below.
Talk: Muzan Alneel, The war in Sudan, a people-centred perspective
Tuesday 8 April, 6-8pm
A talk by Muzan Alneel, a Sudanese writer and industrial policy researcher and CICC judge. This talk will explore the ongoing war in Sudan centering impacted civilians including a review of civilian survival and resistance actions.
Study Group: On Planetary Health and Justice
Wednesday 9 April, 2-5pm
The Planetary Healing Reading Group presents a Study Day to assemble a performative glossary for planetary healing. In recent months, the Planetary Healing Reading Group have gathered texts to deepen their understanding of how planetary health relates to questions of justice. Through readings, objects, somatic exercises and other offerings, the Study Day will convene discussion of key terms relevant to practices of and possibilities for planetary healing, attending to the different ‘ecologies of knowledge’ and relations of power that impact health and environmental justice, with particular focus on inter-scalar and intersectional perspectives, and how the microbiome is a site of struggle for planetary health inextricably linked to social justice. Alongside key terms such as planetary health, microbiome, dysboisis, inflammation, metabolic rift, environmental racism, extractivism, slow violence, deep medicine, healing, ceremony and repair, we anticipate that other terms will emerge through the collective work.
Talk: Ramón Vera Herrera, Territory as a place of encounter and meaning (the collective weaving of stories to recover ourselves as a common)
Wednesday 9 April, 6-8pm
Ramón Vera Herrera will speak about the movements of indigenous peoples in Mexico called “Movements in Defence of Territories”. The movements are ongoing struggles of alliances of different indigenous territories in Mexico. At a time when the word territory has become many things to many people, Ramón will argue that it is necessary to understand all the threads of historical relations that weave the meaning of the place where we live with our kin and our community. He will speak about the struggles of indigenous peoples to reclaim their own visions (based on tradition, history and contemporary practices), to reconstitute what dignifies them and vindicates their trail as peoples who have been disabled, who have been torn apart from their land-territory (life). Indigenous peoples have been disabled by forbidding strategies for subsistence. They have been robbed of their wisdom to solve, by their own means, what is most urgent and important to them. Indigenous peoples then resist by ceasing to judge themselves by the criteria, norms, standards and laws of those who oppress them. In such a context, narrative practices are our most significant tools to weave meaning, and encounters, together.
Serpentine Cinema: The World’s Womb
Thursday 10 April, 7pm
This series of moving image works explore Caribbean ecologies, intricately linking decolonial and environmental discourses to underscore their inherent connections. Influenced by Malcolm Ferdinand’s Decolonial Ecology, which challenges the double fracture of modernity that separates environmental and colonial histories, these works illuminate the myriad complexities of the Plantationocene. The artists featured in this programme, Minia Biabiany, Ayesha Hameed, Sofía Galliza Muriente, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, and Hope Strickland, engage with this double fracture, unravelling the fragmented, yet intimately intertwined, histories of the Caribbean and wider Atlantic.
East India Company Walking Tour: St Paul’s Cathedral
Friday 11 April, 10:30am (meet at 10:20am for a prompt start)
Meeting Point: St Paul’s Churchyard, EC4M 8AD
Recently, St Paul’s Cathedral delivered a community project in partnership with Stepney Community, where they engaged about a dozen diverse members of London’s diverse South Asian community to help reinterpret their East India Company monument. The tour will take participants to look at the monuments, tell the history of St Paul’s and how the monuments were established there, and the achievements of the community project in telling an alternate story.
Screening: Legend of the Loom, with Q&A with Saiful Islam
Friday 11 April, 6-8pm
Legend of the Loom is an insightful and educational documentary film about the cotton fabric muslin and its 2000 year history. In a complex and wide ranging study, the film recounts the production of the transparent and light cotton fabric which was woven from a unique plant, the Gossypium Arboreum Var.Neglecta, which grew only along the rivers of Bengal. The film goes on to discuss its wide ranging history with different experts and educates on how colonialism impacted the craft and had a part in its demise. Followed by a Q&A with writer and researcher Saiful Islam.
Screening: Bengal Shadows, with Q&A with Joy Banerjee
Saturday 12 April, 6-8pm
This hard-hitting documentary brings to light a lesser-known episode of the Second World War – the 1943 famine, during which time several million people starved to death in Bengal. Today, numerous historians, researchers and writers, from both India and Britain, blame the British Empire for the famine that occurred whilst the subcontinent was under its rule. Some historians allege that Winston Churchill was accountable for the famine and even refer to it as a crime against humanity. The film gives a voice to historians, researchers and survivors, who were witness to these tragic events. Followed by a Q&A with Joy Banerjee.
East India Company Dock Walking Tour by Dr Georgie Weymiss (Co-director of the Research Centre for Migration Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London)
Sunday 13 April, 11am – 1pm (meet at 10:50am for a prompt start)
Meeting Point: East India DLR, Blackwall Way, E14 9QN
This fascinating walk will tell the story of the East India Company in the East India Dock area – the company’s imports and exports, lascar seamen, racism and invisibility of the Empire.
Dub Indigo Resistances: Sonic and Textile Testimonies
With Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankovic (Messengers of the Sun), moderated by Beatriz Lobo
Sunday 13 April, 3-5pm
Free, booking required via Eventbrite
Long-term CICC partner Framer Framed presents an afternoon with visual artist duo Antonio Jose Guzman and Iva Jankovic as they reflect on their multidisciplinary decolonial practice and the textile works they create at Sufiyan Khatri’s workshop in Gujarat, India. Their work integrates indigo textiles, soundscapes, and performances, exploring the complex interplay of colonialism and migration in today’s global landscape.
The session responds to the CICC hearing against the British East India Company, which focuses on the colonial legacies of the indigo trade. On 13 April, Guzman and Jankovic present a sonic lecture further contextualizing indigo as a site of historical resistance and artistic practice – a diasporic map connecting material research to sonic histories of agriculture, trade and migration. Following the lecture, a conversation with the artists will be moderated by iniva’s curator Beatriz Lobo.
This event is held in partnership with iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), who have been working with Guzman and Jankovic on their project Concrete Roots (Electric Dub Station Series), which will be presented at the upcoming Liverpool Biennial and at Stuart Hall Library in the summer.
System of Systems presents What is Rwanda? In conversation with Nadine El-Enany and Daniel Trilling
Tuesday 15 April, 6-8pm
The Conservative government’s Rwanda asylum plan – a plan to detain and banish people seeking protection in Britain – was halted in July 2024. Yet outsourcing policies are an increasing dimension of migration management processes in and beyond Europe, echoing historical precedents.
For the inaugural book in System of Systems’ ‘Managing Displacement’ series, writer and legal scholar Nadine El-Enany posed the question: what is Rwanda?, examining how legacies of empire leave distinct traces in the contemporary migratory moment. In the essay, El-Enany unravels the psychosocial forces of displacement attached to policies of exclusion through the psychoanalytic notion of ‘splitting’.
For the CICC, El-Enany will expand upon this question alongside journalist and writer Daniel Trilling. The so-called failed policy will be revisited and reflected upon, ensuring it is not laid to rest, and considering what forms of solidarity may emerge across Europe as outsourcing models are increasingly deployed.
Talk: Ingrid Pollard and Corinne Fowler, Colonial countryside: Empire, Country Houses and Landscape
Wednesday 16 April, 6-8pm
A discussion with Ingrid Pollard, artist, and Prof. Corinne Fowler, professor of Colonialism and Heritage at the University of Leicester.
Workshop: CREAM Ecological Futurisms / Future Everything: Unsensed Rights of Nature
Thursday 17 April, 2-5pm
A day of talks, performances, screenings and workshops organized by CREAM’s Ecological Futurisms centre and Future Everything, focused on the rights of nature.
Panel: Diamond Ashiagbor, Maria del Pilar Kaladeen and Gitanjali Pyndiah, Indian Indenture: Histories, Continuities
Thursday 17 April, 6-8pm
How did the system of Indian indenture operate in the British Empire and what are its legacies today?
Imagining Otherwise: Decolonial Study Group, with Christina Peake, Hope Strickland, Nadia Yahlom and Roshini Kempadoo
Tuesday 22 April, 2-5pm
The study group will develop ways to explore decolonial knowledge about climate activism aimed at encouraging researchers, artists and other communities to learn from each other as a collaborative exchange. The session aims to develop ways of sharing international geopolitical knowledge about the effects of climate crimes, through reading, writing, performing and discussing a range of experimental texts and audiovisual material.
From Our Friends: The Salt March, a performance by Himali Singh Soin and David Soin Tappeser
Tuesday 22 April, 6:30-8pm
In the context of their Art Now commission at Tate Britain, artist duo Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser) present a new performance entitled The Salt March. Following the story of the film installation, The Hedge of Halomancy, a salt-divining courtesan leads a procession of brass players dressed in re-appropriated East India Company uniforms through the galleries. Inspired by the ubiquitous Indian wedding bands, this performance reflects on the legacies and entanglements of Empire and its colonies. Here, a contemporary score becomes a form of resistance, celebration and unification in a time of erasure, grief and division.
Workshop: How Did We Get Here? Zine Making with Incidental Unit
Wednesday 23 April, 2-5pm
Join us for a zine-making workshop. We will visualise the intended and incidental impact of developments in the liberal legal system, and how these have resulted in intergenerational injustice against natures and people around the world. Using collage we’ll create imaginative juxtapositions to reveal complexities and contradictions that are often difficult to grasp.
Participants will research, reflect, make, discuss and share. Tea and cake will be served. No prior experience with zine making is required to participate!
Book Launch: Decolonizing Knowledge
Thursday 24 April, 6-8pm
The launch of the upcoming anthology, edited by Radha D’Souza and Sunera Thobani, in which interdisciplinary scholars rethink strategies for moving contemporary decolonization politics forward by revisiting the writings of the mid-20th century anti-colonial movements’ leading intellectuals. More info here. Speakers: Andrew Higginbottom (Emeritus, Kingston University), Amanda Latimer (Kingston University), Tanroop Sandhu (Queen Mary). Editor: Radha D’Souza (Westminster University). Discussant: Roshini Kempadoo (Westminster University). Hosted by Law, Development and Conflict Research Group and CREAM, University of Westminster.
Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (CICC): The British East India Company on Trial
A project by Radha D’Souza and Jonas Staal
With contributions by Mostafa Henaway, Sudipto Mitra, Ghulam Nadri, Ruth Nyambura, Leonida Odongo, Hashim bin Rashid, Andy Rowell, Swati Srivastava, James Vaughn, Sharon H. Venne and Ramón Vera-Herrera
Commissioned and produced by Serpentine Ecologies
In partnership with Framer Framed, Amsterdam (long term partner), Law Development & Conflict Research Group, CREAM, Ambika P3, University of Westminster, Creative Scotland, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and Create Ireland.
With special thanks to Mondriaan Fund and Jessica Sweidan.
Curated and Produced by: Lucia Pietroiusti, Daisy Gould, Isobel Peyton-Jones, Serpentine, with Eva Speight
Research Assistants: Daniel Voskoboynik and Muhammed Ahmedullah
Coordinator and Producer, Studio Jonas Staal: Nadine Gouders
Architect: Paul Kuipers
Graphic design: Remco van Bladel
Photo and video documentation: Ruben Hamelink
Construction, Studio KunstWerk: Michael Klinkenberg and Niklas van Woerden
An Ecological Futurisms initiative at CREAM, Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, University of Westminster. Led by Neal White, Matthias Kispert, Roshini Kempadoo
Venue managers, Ambika P3: Niall Carter and Eleftherios Dimoulias
The inaugural edition of CICC (Amsterdam, 2021) was commissioned by Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The CICC – The Law on Trial (Seoul, 2022) was produced by Drifting Curriculum and Arts Council Korea (ARKO) and co-produced by Framer Framed, Amsterdam. The CICC – Extinction Wars (Gwangju, 2023) was co-commissioned by the Gwangju Biennale Pavilion Project and Framer Framed, Amsterdam, hosted by Gwangju Museum of Art in partnership with Arts Council Korea (ARKO), the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (Netherlands), Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AfK), the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Korea, and the Mondriaan Fund.
Contributor Bios
Radha D’Souza is a Professor of International Law, Development and Conflict Studies at the University of Westminster (UK). Radha is a public intellectual from India where she worked for social justice movements. She was a trade union organiser in Mumbai, a democratic rights and environmental justice activist. She was a leading participant in the anti-globalisation movements and wrote the concept paper Workers in a Global World (1996) which became the basis for a Asia-wide campaign to oppose WTO proposals to link labour standards to trade agreements and forced the WTO to take the proposal off its agenda. She has written extensively across disciplines for academic and non-academic publications and platforms. Her book Interstate Disputes on Krishna Waters: Law, Science and Imperialism (2006) examines, for the first time, colonial laws and science as vectors for interstate water conflicts over generations in India. Her book What’s Wrong With Rights? Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations (Pluto 2018) forms the conceptual basis for the CICC.
Jonas Staal (1981) is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, democracy, and propaganda. Exhibition-projects include We Demand a Million More Years (Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, 2022), Extinction Wars (with Radha D’Souza, Gwangju Museum of Art, 2023) and Propaganda Station (Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2024). His projects have been exhibited widely at venues such as the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, V&A in London, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, M_HKA in Antwerp, Centre Pompidou-Metz and the Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, as well as the 7th Berlin Biennale, the 31st São Paulo Biennale, the 12th Taipei Biennale and the 14th Shanghai Biennale. Publications include Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (The MIT Press, 2019) and Climate Propagandas: Stories of Extinction and Regeneration (The MIT Press, 2024). Staal was the winner of the Prix de Rome Award in 2023.
