What If As If explores legal fictions as a device to open up possibilities in international immigration law in collaboration with refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants based in the UK, who trained as lawyers in their countries of origin.
Legal fictions are devices used in legal reasoning when something not true is believed or assumed to be true; they allow for the law to be applied without changing the text of the law. An example of a legal fiction is when an inheritor refuses to accept an inheritance – in some legal traditions, in order for this to be legally possible they need to be declared dead by the court and having died before the person who left the legacy.
Through creating a space to speculate on the use of this device, Rogalska’s lawyers find ways to articulate applications of the law that assert human rights and break down borders to the free movement of people.
Commissioned for Dreams and Dramas – Law as Literature exhibition at nGbK, Berlin and curated by Agnieszka Kilian an Jaro Varga.
