Manu Luksch joins School of Law as Artist in Residence
Birkbeck’s School of Law is welcoming their latest Artist-In-Residence, the award-winning artist, filmmaker and researcher, Manu Luksch.
Manu Luksch’s films and art explore how emerging technologies affect our daily lives, social relations, urban space and political structures. Her current work focuses on corporate-governmental relationships and the social effects of predictive analytics in the algorithmic city.
Manu said, “I’m delighted to take up the Artist Residency at The School of Law, whose thought-provoking public programme has been stimulating (and surely will remain so even at pandemic-enforced distance).
My practice often leads me into legal territory. Limitations Permitted investigated the intelligibility of the bye-laws that pertain in public space by translating them into BSL, while the Faceless project treated CCTV images obtained under data protection legislation as ‘found objects’ replete with legal superstructure.
I’m looking forward to learning of the frontiers of research at the School, articulating questions that arise in my work, and discovering new perspectives through collaboration.”
Professor Stewart Motha, Executive Dean of the School of Law said, “The Centre for Law and Humanities at Birkbeck Law School is delighted to host Manu Luksch as the School’s Artist in Residence in 2020/21. Her work chimes with much research and teaching that is underway in Law and Criminology on technology, surveillance, policing, algorithms, borders, democracy, human rights, cities, political dissidents and much more. Her evocative films stretch the form and medium through which interdisciplinary analysis of state authority and corporate power can take place. Manu’s focus on power and technology also resonates with our new LLM in Law and New Technologies. We are looking forward to the conversations and events that will be organised around her residency.”
Manu’s work is included in the Collection de Centre Pompidou, the BFI National Archive and the Core Collection at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Her awards include: Globale Perspektiven Award 2020, ZONTA Award – 65th Kurzfilmfest Oberhausen 2019, Open Media Award 2019, Best Feature – Moscow International Documentary Film Festival 2016, Elevate Artivism Award 2015 and the M. v. Willemer Prize by Ars Electronica Centre and City of Linz.
The Artist in Residence is hosted by Birkbeck’s Centre for Law and Humanities, to provide alternative artistic representations of both the political and social issues their research highlights and to produce a series of thought-provoking events for students, staff and the general public.