Lawfare Daily: A New Exhibition on Visual Investigation with Lisa Luksch, Anjli Parrin, and Brad Samuels

[Intro]

Lisa Luksch: I think what's also been incredibly powerful and what is sometimes missing from the law, less perhaps from journalism and certainly not from advocacy, is the emotion of it all. The incredible loss that those who are at the front lines of the climate crisis feel.

Tyler McBrien: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Tyler McBrien, Managing Editor of Lawfare, with Lisa Luksch, a curator at the Architekturmuseum der TUM, Anjli Parrin, Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and director of the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago, and Brad Samuels, a founding partner at SITU and the director of SITU Research.

Brad Samuels: The space of the museum isn't just one to sort of make ideological claims, you know, it's to present fact finding and reporting in its, you know, in all of its complexity. And I think the visual nature of this factfinding reporting is what makes it relevant to, you know, the art context, the architecture context.

Tyler McBrien: Today, we're talking about a new exhibition, “Visual Investigations: Between Advocacy, Journalism, and Law,” which opens on October 10th at the Architekturmuseum der TUM in Munich. The exhibition explores the emergent field of visual investigation, which brings together interdisciplinary teams of architects, filmmakers, computer scientists, and others, who synthesize images, video, and other data, to present factual accounts of human rights abuses.

Lisa, I would love to start with you to briefly introduce us to the exhibition, how it came to be, and then if you might explain why it's being housed at the Architekturmuseum der TUM. You know, why here? Why your, this host institution?

Lisa Luksch: Yes, thank you. So, as you were saying, the Architekturmuseum is run by the Technical University of Munich and I'm there as a chair for curatorial studies. And we, as a team of the chair, last summer had an excursion to the Venice Biennale, the Architecture Biennale of 2023.

And when we went there, one of the exhibits that we were most yeah, struck by, was Alison Killing's installation and research into the detention camps in China, in Xinjiang. And from there, or from that point on, we had this idea of, or we were intrigued by the question: why architects? So, why are architects even considered in that process? Why are they considered skilled in a way? Why are they interested in uncovering human rights violations?

And so, our director, Andres Lepik, he reached out to Brad, whom he knew from his time at MoMA in New York, because he knew of SITU Research and the things they were doing. And together with Brad and Alison, we kicked off a meeting to think about bringing this topic that we, back then, didn't frame as anything but architecture involved in human rights and try to develop it further. And then Alison brought in a research network called Bellingcat, who are doing amazing work and are well known over, all over the world for their investigations. And then we also approached a fourth partner, the Center for Special Technologies, a research network based in Ukraine, and so in Kyiv and Berlin.

And yeah, when we had that four, like a critical number, I'd say of four, we started developing an exhibition around it, around the question: what role does architecture take in that field of many perspectives, specifically being law, advocacy, and journalism? And yeah, from there we took it and we developed over the course of, yeah, a bit less than a year, I'd say, and we developed this exhibition and the product of those many meetings that we had and people we reached out to, the network we gained, is now an exhibition of, an exhibition evolving around seven case studies of four different partners looking into, yeah, a variety of human rights violations around the globe. So five continents we're looking at, and these research networks introducing their methodology and their, kind of, investigative methods into those violations.

Tyler McBrien: Brad, I wonder if I could bring you into the conversation, first just to hear about how you began to think of curating this exhibition, but also, you know, as Lisa pointed out, there is a through line, a common thread with architecture, but it's quite a diverse group of case studies in geographical scope, in methodology. So how did you know, think through, both the through line here and then also ensuring, you know, diversity to represent a fairly diverse field?

Brad Samuels: Yeah, it's interesting. It's really the point of departure or one of the unifying factors originally was architecture, the study of architecture. But I think we kind of quickly, that was very much a point of departure for, you know, what became a much more interdisciplinary and collaborative endeavor, and I think it's going to be interesting to see all these different knowledge bases and fields brought into an architecture context and a museum context. I'm very keen to see what kind of conversations might arise from that.

I think our approach, in conversation with Lisa and Andres, was to think broadly, almost take a cross section of what visual investigations looks like right now. And to really center, sort of ironically or sort of paradoxically rather, center the space in between. In other words, it's not just law, it's not just advocacy, it's not just journalism, it's all of those things. And so I think, you know, when coming up with a title together, that felt really important, you know, between journalism, advocacy, and law. Each has its own distinct identities, ethics, norms, which are critically important, and they also represent destinations for this work. You know, is it going to court? Is it a report that will be leveraged for advocacy purposes? Is it, you know, in the media?

However, one of the realities I think we have to contend with is that it's also very fluid. In other words, we're moving fluidly between these different fields, and we wanted to kind of foreground that space in between, and sort of big, sort of a big tent of visual investigations, but bringing in, you know, projects that represent law, another project, which is really an advocacy project or historical project, and others that are focused on journalism.

So, that was the original thinking and to try and provide a kind of sweep. It's also deeply reflected in the collaborators and other participants in the show as well.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, and I want to dig into some of the case studies. So maybe one way to do that is, Anjli, I'm specifically interested in your view on this as a lawyer, a law professor, a practitioner, someone who runs a, you know, human rights clinic, of this idea of the space between law, advocacy, journalism, and then also each of those fields limitations on their own.

So if another through line of this work is justice and accountability for these human rights abuses, why then present these investigations in a museum exhibition setting? You know, what is the purpose here when many of these cases are going to go to a court, or leaders will see them in the media? What is the purpose of putting this into a museum exhibition? And then feel free to draw on, you know, one of the case studies or projects you were involved in as well.

Anjli Parrin: Thanks, Tyler. I think for me as a lawyer who's trying to advance positive change around the world, one of the things that I'm constantly thinking about is how does change happen and what drives it? And really, where is the law a useful tool to advance justice and what are the areas in which it falls short? And so how do different approaches and methods advance change?

In terms of a museum, art, architecture, I think what's been incredible for me is it allows us to imagine a different world. And it allows us to take a space and say, what's the world that I actually want? And so we, through, you know, I was involved in the exhibit piece that was around climate justice, and an upcoming case before the International Court of Justice which will be an advisory opinion looking at: what is owed as a result of anthropogenic emissions? What do we have to, what are the consequences of climate inaction under international law?

And that's a very important legal question, which is being answered in this moment. The written submissions have been filed. Oral hearings will be opening during the course of this museum exhibit. But what the space of a museum allows us to do, is to ask questions, to provoke, to think about: even if legally we can't prove that some, one aspect caused another what is the relationship between them? Who's at the forefront of fighting for climate justice and who is impacted most by climate harms? And what's the world that they imagine? What's the world that they want? I think that space in between allows us to look beyond the kind of strictures of a court.

The International Court of Justice itself is an incredibly rigid court. Actually, the Pacific Island students who pushed for this climate justice advisory opinion in the first place, and who spent years and years trying to advocate to get a General Assembly resolution in order to then be able to get the International Court of Justice to take up this question, are effectively not able to present before the court itself, because they're not state parties. It's a court that's between state parties.

The actual structure of the court itself is rather antiquated and anti-climate justice, I might say. You have to give 20 copies of your written submissions printed out before the court. Now imagine somebody from Fiji has to fly all the way to The Hague to present these physical copies to the ICJ.

And so we wanted to look at these questions through a different lens to say, what are the stories from Pacific Islands? What does the knowledge from the ocean and from the islands tell us? And how do we think about answering the questions that the ICJ posits, through the lens of those most impacted?

Tyler McBrien: If I'm not mistaken, the thing that's being presented at the exhibition related to that case is a film, less a documentary and more so, a provocative art piece. So, Lisa, I wonder if there's, you know, even a fourth word in the between journalism, advocacy and law that is art or performance or, you know, art, widely understood. So how do you see the arts coming in as well, to this same mission?

Lisa Luksch: I think that the museum is actually a place where a lot of these things that are usually, unfortunately discussed in a bubble are presented to people who are not expecting to be presented exactly that. They might go into the museum on a Sunday stroll and our museum is, I think, the best place to look at that example, because it's actually, it's hosted at the Pinakothek der Moderne, which is an art museum, and it's four museums under one roof. You buy one ticket, you spend your Sunday at the museum, and then, whoops, in the architecture museum, you're presented with, yeah, a variety of human rights violations and how they are brought to the fore.

Yeah, I think this is a role that we take with our exhibitions, that we actively take with our exhibitions. I think, it's both a chance and a responsibility that architecture can actually actively take a stand in this. And this is, this goes for the museum as well, right? So this could just be a place to exhibit art, but we take art and architecture and use it to exhibit what we think relevant. And in this case, it is exactly that. And art in the specific case that Anjli described, art as the film, in this case, in my opinion, is a way to, yeah, not work in those very specific boundaries, but to combine them, and to approach people in a more inclusive way, I'd say.

Anjli Parrin: I think what's also been incredibly powerful and what is sometimes missing from the law, less perhaps from journalism and certainly not from advocacy, is the emotion of it all. The incredible loss that those who are at the front lines of the climate crisis feel: loss of culture, loss of connection to their ancestors, loss of their homes, is something that you can try to capture in a legal case, but often you're constrained by the dryness of needing to prove an argument.

And I think where we found it's so incredible to have the space that the museum offers us, is it allows us to talk about it in the terms of emotion and of feelings and of, to express the anger, the loss, the grief that people feel with these issues, which otherwise in a courtroom, we might not be able to do to the same extent. And certainly when it comes to the International Court of Justice, which is an interstate court, you're not actually looking at the, necessarily at the individuals who are impacted. You're not hearing those testimonies. I think it allows us to bring that dimension into the conversation.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, it's a great point. And, you know, sometimes these emotional pieces of evidence are completely excluded by design, and if they're not admissible or excluded in some for some other reason.

Brad, I want to give the listeners, especially ones who are unable to make it to Munich, hopefully some listeners will go to the exhibition, but what they'll see when they go.  And I also would love to hear your, how you think through translating these investigations to the museum setting. I don't think this is your first time translating to an exhibition, and also SITU is involved with a few of the case studies. So, what will people see when they enter, and how did you think through constructing it for viewers?

Brad Samuels: Yeah, I mean, this was, the layout of the exhibition was really driven by Lisa and Andres. You know, we've had a lot of conversations about how to try and do this, and one of the challenges was, you know, seven case studies, each of which focuses on very intense subject matter, you know, disturbing and challenging subject matter, in a space, in a sort of exhibition space, which is a kind of civic space, right? How do you ensure that you're not sacrificing the specificity and rigor and intention of the work while also take full advantage of the museum context?

And so what we ended up doing, what Lisa and Andres’ team ended up doing, was thinking about the cases as almost seven exhibitions within an exhibition. And so you imagine these seven rooms within this large, beautiful space that has, you know, a lot of natural light and high ceilings that, you know, the kind of spaces that are unique to museums. So inside that large space, there's these seven individual spaces and you have to be very intentional, right?

You're moving through the threshold. You're choosing to walk into an exhibit about enforced disappearances, or detention camps, or suppression of dissent. And when you're in that space, once you're in this sort of these secondary spaces, there's all kinds of different media. There's video. There's text. There's large super-graphics on the wall, films.

The work is, you know, all of this work is highly, you know, it's about taking disparate data and sort of bringing it together to create something that's greater than the sum of its parts, or the investigation, which draws on a lot of different evidentiary assets. And so, this is a place to kind of look under the hood, in a way. You know, to take not just the distilled version, which you might find in court or find showing up in a newspaper, you know, or a media outlet, but to actually look at all the constituent parts and spend time with it.

I think there remains a pretty fundamental question, and I don't think any of us know the answer to this, which is: how is the public going to get through this exhibit? It's emotionally completely exhausting, and challenging. It will be interesting to see if that's even possible, but I have to imagine after, you know, if you really spend time with the work, you're going to be pretty tired by the second case study. You might want to go back another time or, you know, so that's kind of how it's been assembled.

It’s really thoughtful. And I think there's also been questions about how not to sort of inadvertently expose people to graphic content, and you know, there's a lot of questions around how to, in a space which is all about visual, how to really mitigate the effects of the visual, in a way, and the auditory. So there was a lot of thought about that as well, which from a museum perspective is sort of cutting against the grain of what you'd usually seek to be doing.

To the question of our work in exhibitions: I actually must say I have a very fraught relationship to exhibitions. I've always felt uncomfortable, about our work in that context. And we haven't done many exhibitions at all, actually. And almost all of our work is, you know, either going to court or it's a report that's going to be put out with a human rights organization. But there was something about this moment in time when we were approached by the museum that felt like, and maybe it's a sort of, sense that other forms feel like they're failing us in some ways, that the museum context felt uniquely capable of foregrounding certain types of work. And it just felt like the right time.

And that's the reason, you know, we have four different projects in this exhibition, and two of them are projects that we've completed already. But we thought about what projects could we include that could only be presented in this way because it's a museum context. And so the project that Anjli was describing, about the climate change in the Pacific Islands is one of them. So that's something that is being, you know, presented for the first time in this exhibition in a format which no one asked for. We just felt like it was the right format. It needed to be in this format, as a film, for the reasons Anjali described.

And then another project about the West Bank and land dispossession. And that project, also, no one was asking for, but it felt like a, you know, space in which we could present it first. And hopefully both of these, ironically, and without much foresight, both of them have ICJ advisory opinions attached to them that are happening right now. So all of a sudden, both cases have the potential to, and this is exciting for us, to have lives after the exhibition, you know, in contexts that are more traditionally legal.

Anjli Parrin: I think part of what we were trying to do with the various case studies is also showcase how international law is made, where journalism derives from, and some of the unusual suspects. The case before the International Court of Justice was brought by Vanuatu. And the Pacific Islands’ nations have been the most vocal in trying to advance international law around climate justice. And in the film, you have a young activist who talks about the role of Pacific Island young people as world builders. And I think that's been really powerful.

In all of the seven case studies, we're looking at questions which might not normally make it into law, which might be one special piece as part of a journalism investigation, but won't necessarily hold the broader conversation. And which often, there's often a misperception that they, that this isn't what drives change, but what you see is that it's young people, it's those most impacted, it's the communities on the ground that are pushing forward a lot of the really innovative advancements in both law, advocacy, and journalism. And I think one of the things that we wanted to do was highlight not just how are things happening, but also who's making these decisions, whose voice matters and how is that being used in international law.

Brad Samuels: And I just want to also add to that, that Neil Sanzgiri is the filmmaker who worked with us on this film, and without his contribution, you know, that none of this would have happened. So yeah, shout out to Neil.

Tyler McBrien: Anjli, I want to go back to you for this question. I understand that a good bit of methodology is also presented alongside these case studies.

So, it's not just these visually striking maps and videos, and just these really engaging media, but also, you know, a heavy amount of textual methodology, explanatory pieces about remote sensing technology. So, I think on, you know, on the one hand it could be, of course, emotionally taxing to get through, but your average museum goer, you know, is also then confronted with some highly technical methodology. Why was it important to put both out there? You know, why is it not sufficient just to present the more visual product of the investigation?

Anjli Parrin: I think for a couple of reasons. First, there's not a lot of knowledge or understanding about how visual investigations actually work. And I think for us, it was really important to talk about what are the possibilities that visual investigations give lawyers, advocates, journalists, and others, and what are the limitations of that. To some extent, part of what we're trying to do is have a conversation also about methodology and not just about substance.

And so, in my day-to-day work for example, I might be using a lot of these technologies as a tool of factfinding, right? Remote sensing might be a way to see where is a mass atrocity happening? What has changed in the landscape over time? How has settlements in the West Bank changed over the years? Which is something where if I'm going on the ground, I'm going to see what happens in that specific moment. I'm not going to be able to go back 20 years in time. Of course, with satellite imagery, that's something that I can then do. So, for us, it's about showing visual investigations first as a tool of factfinding.

Second, I think it's about looking at visual investigations and a lot of these technologies, which are seen as, I think, as you note, quite technical, maybe a little bit advanced, the domain of computer science or other expertise, and certainly something that lawyers often are a little bit scared of, as really important analytical tools: how do we use these tools to understand the world better? To look at something in a way that we might not have been able to before? To take 50,000 pieces of data and make sense of them, in a specific geography, and in a specific moment? And I think that's where the architecture piece comes in.

And then finally, how can you use these tools to actually simplify your life? Or sometimes if, you know, when I submit expert reports to a court, for example, I might have a 700-page report that has 15 different experts who've worked on it, that has all kinds of forensic analysis, medical analysis, criminalistics analysis, and I think where I see the power of visual investigations is making it make sense, making it accessible. Because while the court, in my case, the court might be the audience, my second audience is those who are most impacted. And I want them to be able to look at the same information that I've produced and say, actually, okay, this makes sense. This is what happened to my community. This is what's happening on the ground. And I think that's where it's been really useful as a tool of, actually, simplification.

But I think, especially in the era where, with artificial intelligence, it's so hard to trust what information is true, with, a kind of, I think, an attack on the truth, or at least a questioning of the truth. One of the things that's really important is to show your methods, is to say, this is how I got to where I am, and that's why you should believe it. Because I think the reality is saying something is true just because it is, doesn't cut it anymore. And we are in an era where you have to explain why you think something is correct and why you think something is true. Of course, in the courtroom context, that's something that we're always doing, right?

And I think Brad's coming at this, and perhaps Lisa coming at this, with this kind of public advocacy goal. We're coming at this as trying to make the law and these legal tools accessible and then trying to also move it back. You know, we're trying to have a conversation on both sides. So we want there to be a conversation in the public about the International Court of Justice, and at the International Court of Justice, we want there to be a conversation about the public.

And so we are very much seeing this film as also being useful to the court proceedings itself, be it through public advocacy, be it through showing some of these testimonies that are in the film at the visitor center of the ICJ, through other forms of protest, through having public hearings. I think for us, what's really important is that there is this dialogue between the court in the world and the world in the court.

Brad Samuels: We definitely feel like it's a false dichotomy or a false choice to have to say this is either going to be accessible or it's going to be, you know, very technical. I think we definitely felt like we were going to make an attempt to have it both ways in this exhibition, and accept that some people will engage with some of the content at a higher level and others will go really deep in specific places, but it's all there if you want to engage with it.

And there was, there's an effort made to make sure it's not esoteric and only the language is only, you know, readable by lawyers or computer scientists, you know, there's definitely an effort made, but I think different people will engage with different parts of the exhibition and we're totally fine with that.

And we think it's important for the reasons that Anjli outlined, it's really important to show your work. And it's also really important, I think, for me personally, to kind of take the position that the space of the museum isn't just one to sort of make ideological claims. You know, it's to present fact finding and reporting in its, in all of its complexity. And I think the visual nature of this fact finding and reporting is what, you know, makes it relevant to, you know, the art context, the architecture context, but it doesn't mean it needs to be simplified in any way.

Lisa Luksch: In the end, we also really didn't want these, let's say, visual investigations to only be compelling, because they are complex. Like, we don't want people to only believe, aha, this result must be true because wow, this looks so complex and so expert. But we want people to be able to understand how the team, of experts, obviously, but how the team got from problem to solution in a way, if that's a bit too simplified. But that there is no good in people just seeing, aha, there is experts working on this, I don't, I can't understand any of this, or this is too much for me, but I just believe it because it looks so good, it's compelling.

But they really, in each of the cases, this was our goal, should be able, if they have the time and, yeah, the emotional capacity to get through all of them, they should, in each of those very individual case studies, be able to understand what the team was confronted with and how they came to their conclusions.

And one very, very good example of this is, in my opinion, well, they're obviously all very good, but one very good example for this, exactly, is the Bellingcat piece that evolves all around sound analysis. And they really tried to make it very, very obvious for everyone how a bullet travels and what that means for where the location of a shooter can most likely be, and yeah, the installation that evolved around it now has a Dolby Surround system. My team was very proud that they can actually, really build that. So that's just what I wanted to add.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, I think your point about accessibility is also especially salient because in at least some of the exhibitions, at least some of them involve user-generated content. So theoretically can relate to anyone who has a smartphone or is able to record something.

But Brad, I want to pick up on something you were talking about earlier about the, sort of, the afterlives of these investigations, or some of them have are time bound. They've been sort of completed, but others are ongoing. I'm curious what your hopes are, at least for some of these case studies beyond the end of the exhibition, whenever it wraps up in February: the afterlife of it.

Brad Samuels: Yeah, I mean, I think the one that stands out in terms of what's next, is the work on the West Bank. And sort of the evaluation of whether the violations we're seeing constitute apartheid, or the crime of apartheid. e worked with Yeshtin, which is a human rights, Israeli-based human rights organization, and Michael Sfard, who's a human rights attorney, Israeli human rights attorney, to basically build a, you know, it's not quite a trial-ready dossier, but It's towards an evidentiary file that could be used for litigation.

What that meant was that we went very specific. We've looked at three different locations, looked at three different types of violations, and spent time assembling evidence, really specifically around this question of apartheid, right? It wasn't a broad set of sort of questions about the occupation. It was very specific.

And as I mentioned, the ICJ's advisory opinion came out in July in the middle of when we were working on this. And well, that's not a legally binding opinion. It does sort of open the door for different forms of litigation in a variety of jurisdictions. And that is likely what we'll be looking at next. You know, how can this work be applied in court? What jurisdictions make sense? You know, what other work needs to be done, partially based on the question of jurisdiction, to sort of bring it forward in a kind of, in a very specific way in which it would need to be in order to be useful in legal contexts.

Another thing that I'm kind of interested in terms of what comes next is that, you know, we were acutely aware of what it means to do work on the subject of Israel-Palestine within the German context, the German institutional context. And there's been a lot of pressure from all sides. You know, there's been boycotts of German institutions, by artists because, you know, against some of the suppression of different types of dissent, things that have happened in different museum contexts in Germany over the past year that have really put a chill on work that's critical of Israel.

And there was even, you know, a deep ambivalence within our own team about whether to participate, you know, let alone do work on the subject matter of the West Bank. And we chose to go ahead and do it, and I think that's an important thing that I want to flag. Also, you know, with gratitude to Lisa and Andres for creating a space for that, because I know it's not going to be easy, but it does reflect a kind of real belief in during this very difficult time, the importance of spaces of civil discourse, of presenting information, of having difficult conversations, and that was a friction and a tension, institutional tension.

And like I said, from both sides, both, you know, from the artists and architects out there and from all the people who would have problems, you know, and find very problematic the work that criticizes Israel. So I think, you know, once again, the space in between feels important, and I'll be interested to see how the work is engaged with in this, you know, very specific German institutional context.

Lisa Luksch: I'm also, I'm very thankful to obviously all the teams to, yeah, for the effort that they all did. We invited them to do extra work, basically, to add to their normal workload. And they all did so amazing, and I think specifically the West Bank project also, obviously, something that created some kind of, yeah, difficulty to, to communicate within, both within the museum and at the university.

But I think that's what makes it, what makes this such a great opportunity that we're actually now presenting it as both, right? As a piece at the museum that is owned by the university, and that the conversations we want to initiate around that, both just with any visitor, but then also within the public program that we're doing, so within guided tours, but also within talks that we're having.

Yeah, I'm even more excited for the conversations that I'm having with all of our visitors than the mere exhibition itself, because that's when it gets really interesting, when the work that we've all put in for that year is actually out there and is received and yeah, reacted to by visitors. And that's where, yeah, where everything gets very interesting. So I'm very happy to finally welcome all of the visitors to our exhibition.

Tyler McBrien: Anjli, I'm also curious your hopes for the afterlife of the climate film, which is, I think, ironic because you would, you know, as one might assume as a lawyer, you would give an answer similar to Brad just now, but I take it you probably won't. So I'm curious, you know, what your hopes are for the film afterwards.

Anjli Parrin: Yeah, I think I have two main goals and hopes. The first is really backward-looking. I hope that the film allows us to interrogate some of the structures, the larger sense of structures around how justice is done, who decides who makes the rules and who's in charge of protecting the future.

I think what the museum piece and the film has allowed us to do is to have those questions put out there. Why is it that the International Court of Justice is the arbiter for the future, well, the present and the future of those in the Pacific Islands, and of course, across other communities around the world? How did we get to this climate crisis in the first place? What went wrong?

You know, at a very macro level, not in the sense of a specific harm leading to a specific set of violations. I think that's important and that will be litigated. And you're seeing an enormous increase in climate justice litigation around the world because it's the tools that we have, right? We have the legal system as a tool. We've seen that perhaps, at the policy level, there isn't the level of action that we wanted. We've been going, you know, COP after COP comes by. Most of the fossil fuel companies vigorously attend and they advocate and lobby really hard at all of the climate conference, the Paris Agreement was certainly much weaker than was expected.

We're not having a lot of success in terms of negotiating a deal. And so advocates have been turning to the courts as a space to vindicate and obtain redress for climate harms. But it's also a very blunt instrument. It's not an instrument that was designed for this kind of advocacy necessarily.

It's very narrow. It requires precedent. You need to show very specific sets of harms. And I think what I hope the film does is allow us to say, well, like maybe we need to take a second look at some of these systems. Maybe we need to try to figure out what is the value of the International Court of Justice and where is it harmful? You know, it sits in the former building of the League of Nations. These are colonial structures and yet there are colonial structures called upon now to act for transformation. And I think those are the questions that I really hope outlive the exhibit. And then the second thing is, methodologically, I really hope we can start to think about kind of interdisciplinarity as more than just a buzzword.

It's much, much harder. You know, Brad and I often don't speak the same language. We don't come at questions the same way. As a lawyer, what I want to know is that, you know, X caused Y beyond reasonable doubt. And Brad is just going to say like, you know, I'm seeing a change. I can't tell you why that change actually happened. What I'm seeing here is a difference.

Or, you know, I remember once when we had an early mass grave investigation, we were discussing like, how do we create a 3D model and document the entire mass grave site? And we thought, okay, we can use, you know, photogrammetry. And so, we can create a really detailed map or a recreation of what the site looks like.

And Brad said, okay, just try to take as many close pictures from all angles of the site so that you can basically cover every piece of this mass grave site. And I said, okay, Brad, you know, I'll do this in about five to 10 minutes. And Brad went no, like at least three hours. And I was like, Brad, I have six hours to do the whole investigation. And so then we had to go back and think about how do we actually do both? You know, is, do we need this model? Can we use something else? Can we use something that's maybe less detailed, but it's still going to achieve the purposes?

And I think those are the conversations, I hope, that will outlive the actual exhibit, because working across disciplines is not easy. Scientists and lawyers don't necessarily agree. Certainly, architects and lawyers don't necessarily agree. And I think more of that is what leads to stronger investigations, leads to better ground truthing of information because no one discipline has all of the answers. And so you kind of, you have to bring it together, but you have to do it in a way that's going to make sense across these disciplines.

Tyler McBrien: Well, Anjli, Lisa and Brad, thank you all so much for taking the time to speak with me. It's been a wonderful conversation.

Brad Samuels: Thanks so much.

Anjli Parrin: Thanks, Tyler.

Tyler McBrien: The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad-free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter through our website, lawfaremedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters.

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