There are new and innovative ways to see law; to examine law; to represent violations and inhumanity that are regulated by law. These include visual representations in comic, graphic form. The word ‘manga’ is used loosely. Although this refers to a specific form of Japanese animation, we will showcase and use a variety of animated forms. Our image on the home page is abstracted from ‘OH! MY GOD! I MISS YOU. by the artist Yoshitomo Nara. The image on the information mood board is from an animated poster in the Newcastle-Upon-Tyne excellent Tyneside cinema: see http://tynesidecinema.co.uk of the 2014 film Kumiko The Treasure Hunter. It is often easier to digest, and or to cope with, some of the horrors of torture, war crimes and violence through their visualisation in animated form. In this section of the website in particular, we showcase some stimulating work in this area, in particular to show how it can be used by those working in the legal field.We hope to have many contributions. Dr Thom Giddens has been at the forefront of setting up what is called The Graphic Justice Alliance – we explore this more later in the year.
In this edition, we are delighted to present three short animated videos produced by PositiveNegatives: see http://Positivenegatives.org, an organisation set up by Dr Ben Dix, an academic at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Again, we will explore their work later in another edition. For now, please enjoy these three videos of three refugees’ journeys which were commissioned by the Norwegian People’s Aid, illustrated by Lindsay Pollock and animated by Wael Toubaji.